In the fictional and real world, London has always provided itself as a nerve center for espionage in the world resulting from the Second World War. Discreet and insular, the former capital of the Empire has been the meeting point between the United States, Russia, Asia and the European Union, in the past and today. Last year, London was the scene of novel operations like the one that ended the life of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian agent who played double game with MI6. That is why it is not surprising that in the world of literature there are possible coincidences like the one discovered by William Boyd, author in charge of continuing the James Bond saga.

The writer of El amor es ciego (Alfaguara, 2019) has noticed, analyzing Ian Fleming's first novels , that Agent 007 shared a sidewalk with George Smiley, the character created by John le Carré as a version, in his opinion more Realistic of spy profession. Conceived as two diametrically opposed profiles of the traditional British agent, Smiley and Bond would nevertheless have the Chelsea neighborhood as a connecting link, where just a few meters would separate the door of the house from each other.

«When I started planning Solo (2013), my contribution to the continuation of the saga, I started to read again all the novels written by Ian Flemming in chronological order. I did it armed with a pen and taking notes so that it had all the textures and details necessary for the story to be purely Bondian, ”Boyd explains in an article for the Times Literary Supplement . "One of the first things I realized was the location of Bond's apartment. Although he does not make this clear in Moonraker (1955), he does refer to housing as a 'fairly comfortable apartment located in a Square full of banana trees near King's Road '. There are quite a few small squares that fit that description, but in Thunderball (1961) Fleming gives a crucial coordinate:' Bond left the small square of Chelsea and entered Kings Road, rapidly accelerating with drive down Sloane Street to enter the park. "There are only two places where that is possible, Wellington Square and Markham Square, and in the latter there are no bananas." That is: a minute and a half from the house of Smiley.

Despite the fact that it is now one of the most exclusive enclaves in the city, Chelsea contained at the time when both authors placed their characters there some apples of prosperity along with other pockets of poverty. Just the opposite of what is happening today in the entire Kensington district. The area, yes, was in the process of revitalization. Young writers, artists, musicians and fashion professionals began to settle there during the 1950s due to its proximity to the city center ... but above all due to its low prices, something that made the neighborhood one of the bohemian centers of the capital during the vibrant 1960s. Right now, however, a four-bedroom house on the site where Bond lived easily fetches 13 million euros.

At that time, therefore, Chelsea fit more with the profile of Smiley, whom Le Carré presents as a middle-class spy - also because of his appearance: short, bald and overweight - used to taking public transport to get around. Boyd, however, likes to play at imagining "Bond leaving Wellington Square in his Bentley Continental Mark II and passing the portly, bespectacled figure of George Smiley, who was surely heading for Sloane tube station. Square on its way to Cambridge Circus [the MI6 one] » .

So Boyd finds it "eccentric" that an "elite spy with refined tastes and a license to kill" chose Chelsea as his home, but the author claims that there is a much more prosaic reason. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Fleming was still editor-in-chief of the International area at The Sunday Times, Desmond MacCarthy, a newspaper literary critic, lived in Wellington Square with his wife. So, after allegedly attending various parties there before MacCarthy passed away in 1952, just a year before the launch of Casino Royale, Fleming would have chosen the number 25 Wellington Square as the fictional home of James Bond and as a secret tribute to his friend.

Therefore, and separated by the artery of King's Road, Bond and Smiley would have lived, in that world of fiction, for several years just 100 meters from each other, since the character of Le Carré had his home set at 9 from Bywater Street, where he stayed until at least the 70s. According to its creator, he chose it because he knew the area. Lena Wickman, the life-changing talent scout, inspired the interior of the home and the location. Also, "Bywater is a very pretty name, and a very fitting place for a man doomed to live in a dead end."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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