Bond's unsung heroes: Geoffrey Boothroyd, the real Q

[Blowfeld]

Bond's unsung heroes: Geoffrey Boothroyd, the real Q
The gun expert who banned Bond from carrying a 'lady's gun'


Published: 3:25PM BST 21 May 2009

For Geoffrey Boothroyd, at the time an engineering analyst, but later the world's leading authority on shotguns and author of the seminal 1961 work, Gun Collecting, it was an impropriety akin to putting Bond in a cocktail dress, or making his signature drink a Cosmopolitan.

'Dear Mr Fleming,' he wrote after reading Casino Royale, 'I wish to point out that a man in James Bond's position would never consider using a .25 Beretta. It's really a lady's gun - and not a very nice lady at that! Dare I suggest that Bond should be armed with a .38 or a nine millimetre - let's say a German Walther PPK? That's far more appropriate.'

This was the beginning of a correspondence that would turn Boothroyd, a portly Glaswegian, into James Bond's armourer, 'Major Boothroyd' - 'the greatest small-arms expert in the world', as he's described in Dr No.

And Major Boothroyd would later become known as Q, the gadgets expert played with such delightful exasperation by Desmond Llewelyn in 17 Bond films. Boothroyd also gave invaluable service as weapons adviser on From Russia With Love, explaining the best way to blow up a helicopter.

He then returned to his vast library of black-and-white negatives of guns being manufactured, loaded, fired and admired, his column at Shooting Times and his study of Scottish pistols, safe in the knowledge that he had spared Fleming's - and Bond's - blushes.

This story can be found at www.telegraph.co.uk