2019 #AtoZChallenge – My Literary BFF Q

MY LITERARY BFF

Q

Throughout the month of April, you can catch up on my posts for this year’s challenge as well as all my alphabet offerings from previous years on my Blogging from A to Z page HERE.

When I read a great novel or a series of novels, sometimes I wish I could step into the book and join the world experienced by the characters. I just know that if I were there, I’d feel at home and contribute positively to the plot. I think it is those characters that keep me returning to works by the same author and even read those same novels over and over again.  For this year’s challenge, I plan to visit those characters we all know and love.  Those characters that we want to step off the page because we know that if they did, we’d be best friends forever.  Today, please meet Q.

When it comes to the James Bond films, six actors have held the role of Q since 1962; however there is no such character in Ian Flemings novels, only Q Branch.

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Q stands for Quartermaster which is a job title rather than a name. He is the head of Q Branch (or later Q Division), the fictional research and development division of the British Secret Service.  Q has appeared in 21 of the 24 Eon Productions’s James Bond films, the exceptions being Live and Let Die, the 2006 Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. The character was also featured in both non-Eon Bond films, Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983).

Charles Fraser-Smith is widely credited as the inspiration for Q due to the spy gadgets he built for the Special Operations Executive.

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British World War II organization formed in 1940 for the purpose to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia) against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements.  Few people were aware of SOE’s existence. It was also known as “Churchill’s Secret Army” or the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”.  After the war, the organization was officially dissolved on 15 January 1946. A memorial to SOE’s agents was unveiled in October 2009 on the Albert Embankment by Lambeth Palace in London.

Fraser-Smith’s spy gadgets were called Q-devices, after the Royal Navy’s World War I Q-ships. In the Fleming novels there are frequent references to Q and Q Branch with phrases like “see Q for any equipment you need” (Casino Royale) and “Q Branch would handle all of that” (Diamonds Are Forever), with a reference to “Q’s craftsmen” in From Russia, with Love.

When it comes to the spy game, your success depends on many things and for James Bond, one of those things was that he depended on Q.

Please enjoy these 30 Q moments in James Bond film history (two parts)