The chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, Alex Younger, acknowledged on Thursday that the organisation’s most famous fictional agent, James Bond, is both a blessing and curse.
Younger mused about the impact of the Bond movies during a rare public speech by the chief of an organisation whose existence was not even officially recognised until 1994.
The downside to such “fictional stereotypes”, he said, was that Bond created a view of an MI6 officer that bore no resemblance to reality.
The HQ, known as Vauxhall Cross, is well known, compared with MI6’s previous HQ near Waterloo, which was supposedly secret.