WW2 100: Budleigh’s Bond Connection
How the real-life ‘M’ of Ian Fleming’s novels planned a survival strategy with local resident Murray Levick during WW2. The poster that I designed for the 2011-12 exhibition Fairlynch Museum’s 2011-12 exhibition, entitled ‘Survival!’, featured the extraordinary experiences of Antarctic explorer Murray Levick. This remarkable Budleigh resident’s expertise proved vital during WW2. When he was well into his sixties he came out of retirement to work on the same secret operation as James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Levick skins a penguin on board the Terra Nova , part of Robert Falcon Scott’s last Antarctic expedition of 1910-13. Photo by Herbert Ponting (Ponting Collection: Reference P2005/5/911); Wikipedia More than 20 years ago after his polar experience, Murray Levick’s reputation as an expert in survival in hostile environments was such that at the outbreak of war he was asked by the Government to instruct commandos in the art of survival...