National Archives: James Bond scriptwriter cast in role of real-life agent

The writer who helped bring James Bond to the big screen was investigated by MI5 as a suspected Communist agent, according to files made public for the first time today.

Wolf Mankowitz helped to script the first Bond movie, Dr No. He also went on to write the screenplay for the first cinema version of Casino Royale in 1967.

But while Mankowitz helped to establish Bond as the world's most famous fictional spy, papers released by the National Archives show that for more than a decade his activities were monitored by MI5 amid concerns that he was a real-life secret agent.

Mankowitz first came to the attention of the Security Service in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War. He and his wife Ann were mentioned in an intercepted letter from a former soldier and suspected Communist called David Holbrook who MI5 were investigating.

Holbrook wrote that he went to see the couple in Newcastle where he found them "avoiding National Service and doing themselves well" earning 6-a-week lecturing for the left wing Workers' Educational Association.

MI5 was sufficiently interested to ask Newcastle Police to investigate Mankowitz. In 1949 Newcastle Police sent an updated report about the Mankowitzs' time in the city, admitting that "it was not ascertained that they made any direct contact with the local Communist Party".

The archives also reveal that a Nobel laureate scientist, who helped discover the secrets of DNA, was investigated by MI5 as a suspected Soviet spy

Professor Maurice Wilkins was awarded the prize in 1962 for his work on the double helix structure of DNA, the molecule which carries the genetic "life code". Eleven years earlier however he came under suspicion as a possible traitor who helped betray the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. M15 concluded there was no evidence against him and the investigation was dropped.