Background
As with the previous novels in the series, aspects of Thunderball come from Fleming's own experiences: the visit to the health clinic was inspired by his own 1955 trip to the Enton Hall health farm and Bond's medical record, as read out to him by M, is a slightly modified version of Fleming's own. The name of the health farm, Shrublands, was taken from that of a house owned by the parents of his wife's friend, Peter Quennell. Fleming dedicates a quarter of the novel to the Shrublands setting and the naturalist cure Bond undergoes.
Bond's examination of the hull of the Disco Volante was inspired by the ill-fated mission undertaken on 19 April 1956 by the ex-Royal Navy frogman "Buster" Crabb on behalf of MI6, as he examined the hull of the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze that had brought Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to Britain. Crabb disappeared in Portsmouth Harbour and was never seen again. As well as having Buster Crabb in mind, Fleming would also recall the information about the 10th Light Flotilla, an elite unit of Italian navy frogmen who used wrecked ships in Gibraltar to launch attacks on Allied shipping. The specifications for the Disco Volante herself had been obtained by Fleming from the Italian ship designer, Leopold Rodriguez.
As often happened in Fleming's novels, a number of names were taken from people of whom he had known. Ernst Stavro Blofeld's name partially comes from Tom Blofeld, a Norfolk farmer and a fellow member of Fleming's club Boodle's, who was a contemporary of Fleming's at Eton. Tom Blofeld's son is Henry Blofeld, a sports journalist, best known as a cricket commentator for Test Match Special on BBC Radio. Additionally, when Largo rents his beachside villa, it is from "an Englishman named Bryce", whose name was taken from the American Ivar Bryce, Fleming's friend, who had a beachside property in Jamaica called Xanadu.
Other names used by Fleming included a colleague at The Sunday Times, Robert Harling, who was transformed into Commissioner of Police Harling, whilst an ex-colleague from his stock broking days, Hugo Pitman, became Chief of Immigration Pitman and Fleming's golfing friend, Bunny Roddick, became Deputy Governor Roddick. The title Thunderball came from a conversation Fleming had about a US atomic test.
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