About
Canadian soldier, fighter pilot, businessman, and spymaster who served as the senior representative of the British Security Coordination for the western allies during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename, Intrepid. Many people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond.
Before Fame
He left school at a young age and worked as a telegrapher. He volunteered for service in World War I. He became a flying ace but was shot down and served as a prisoner of war. Between the wars, he returned to Manitoba and cofounded a hardware business. The business failed, but he moved to England and became wealthy through his many contacts.
Trivia
By 1936, he was voluntarily providing confidential information to British MP Winston Churchill about how Adolf Hitler's Nazi government was building up its armed forces and hiding military expenditures. Ian Fleming wrote of him: "James Bond is a highly romanticised version of a true spy. The real thing is . . . William Stephenson."
Family Life
He was born William Samuel Clouston Stanger in Point Douglas, Winnipeg, Manitoba. His mother was Icelandic, and his father was Scottish from the Orkney Islands. He was adopted early by an Icelandic family after his parents could no longer care for him, and given his foster parents' name, Stephenson. In 1924 he married American tobacco heiress Mary French Simmons, of Springfield, Tennessee.
Associated With
As head of the British Security Coordination, Stephenson handed British scientific secrets over to Franklin D. Roosevelt and relayed American secrets back to Winston Churchill. In 1979 he was portrayed by David Niven in the miniseries A Man Called Intrepid, based on William Stevenson's bestseller, A Man Called Intrepid.
