Ian Fleming, of course, worked for British Intelligence during WW2 (mostly in the office, planning a lot of field operations), and on one particular assignment, acted as advisor helping the Americans SET UP their own similar outfit... the O.S.S. So we might actually blame Fleming for a LOT of horrible things that went on in the world later on.
When he was working as a newspaper journalist, he began writing his spy novels, based on his own real-life information, but apparently based his fictional character's personality and in-the-field missions on his cousin, Christopher Lee.
Ever since I found this out, I keep wondering how a James Bond film series might have been if they'd started one in the mid-1950s, and starred a relatively-young Lee as Bond.
Of course, by the time Albert Broccoli & Harry Saltzman formed a partnership to do the Bond films, Lee was presumably out of their price range (at least, in 1962 when they were getting started). They always liked to put their profits back into the sequels to keep making bigger and better films, but when it came to hiring actors, they were always cheap bastards.
