Wartime exploits of the real James Bond

He's the dashing secret agent who surrounded himself with women, ruthlessly dispatched his enemies and had a series of swashbuckling adventures.

Not James Bond, but a real Second World War hero who has now been identified as the inspiration behind Ian Fleming's fictional creation.

A new biography of Wing Commander Forest "Tommy" Yeo-Thomas, one of Britain's great wartime secret agents, claims the writer based the character of 007 on him and recreated many of his experiences in the novels.

Yeo-Thomas - codename White Rabbit - was parachuted into occupied France three times before being captured and tortured by the Gestapo. He was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp, but managed to escape to Allied lines.

His link to Bond is revealed in a document discovered at the National Archives in west London by Sophie Jackson, a historian, during her research into a new account of his exploits, Churchill's White Rabbit: The True Story of a Real-Life James Bond.

In a dossier of recently declassified documents, she found a memo from May 1945 in which Fleming, who also worked in intelligence during the war, briefed colleagues on the agent and his escape from the Nazis.

The men worked in different units - Yeo-Thomas for the Special Operations Executive and Fleming in the Naval Intelligence Division - and this is the first time a connection has been established between them.

Miss Jackson said that the link, along with remarkable similarities in the characters of Yeo-Thomas and Bond, and in their escapades, supports the idea that Fleming based his character on the agent.

"It shows that Fleming was interested in the case of Yeo-Thomas and had been following it," she added. "Fleming picked up the story and was interested in it.

"On top of that, there are other significant parallels between Yeo-Thomas and Bond, in their personal life, their relationships with women and attitudes towards women and the way Yeo-Thomas acted as a secret agent. He acts in a way we think of fictional spies acting."

Yeo-Thomas is the latest in a long line of suggested inspirations for Bond, including the Second World War intelligence officers Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job and Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale, Fleming's brother, Peter, and even the author himself.

In support of her theory, Miss Jackson cites parallels between Yeo-Thomas's war record and sequences in Fleming's novels.

Most striking is the agent's experience at the hands of the Gestapo, recreated in a scene from the first Bond novel, Casino Royale - as well as the more recent film of the same name - in which the fictional spy is tortured using the same techniques.

On an earlier mission, on the Lyon to Paris express, Yeo-Thomas found himself having tea with Klaus Barbie, the notorious Nazi known as the "Butcher of Lyon".

Taking the last seat in the dining car, the agent realised he was sitting next to the local chief of the Gestapo. The Nazis were on the lookout for Yeo-Thomas at the time, but the agent - who was fluent in French - engaged Barbie in conversation, pretending to be a supporter of the occupation.

He was uncertain whether Barbie had twigged who he was, but managed to get away safely on arrival in Paris. The encounter has echoes of a scene in From Russia, With Love, in which the Bond is on the Orient Express and dines with an enemy agent.

On another occasion, Yeo-Thomas adopted the identity of another man to evade detection, a tactic Bond uses in Diamonds Are Forever and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Indeed, several of the techniques used by Yeo-Thomas to escape or evade his enemies - hiding in a hearse, jumping from a train, strangling a guard or adopting disguises - echo tactics later used by Bond.

And, like the licensed to kill 007, Yeo-Thomas always carried a gun, even though it was contrary to SOE policy. He was also prepared to use it.

On one occasion, unable to shake off an enemy agent pursuing him through Paris, he lured him to a bridge and hid. When his pursuer arrived, Yeo-Thomas pounced and shot him at close range, before tossing his body in the Seine. He could also kill with his bare hands. In 1920, after volunteering to serve with the Polish army against the Soviets, he escaped from a Russian prison by strangling a guard.

Miss Jackson also believes Bond's character was based on traits Fleming must have observed in Yeo-Thomas. Like his fictional counterpart, the real spy was charming and attractive to women; the main members of his personal cell were all female.

He was dashing, having worked at a French fashion house before the war, and had a tangled love life. He never married his partner, Barbara, whom he met during the war and who later took his name, because he was unable to get a divorce from his estranged wife, Lillian, living in occupied France.

After the war, Yeo-Thomas succumbed to recurring nightmares and illness, attributed to his wartime experiences. In this, he appears closer to the "darker" and more "psychologically troubled" Bond of the Fleming novels than the more light hearted depictions of the later films. He died in 1964, at the age of 62.