The image of Bagley shown here is from the Desmond Bagley collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University USA. Credited with the copyright name of Bengt-Ove Tideman, it was taken in Strängnäs, Sweden in the last week of May, or first week of June 1972, when Bagley visited Iwan Morelius (aka Iwan Hedman-Morelius), who was to become a close personal friend. The image was taken in Iwan’s dining room, at Flodins väg 5, by a photographer who worked for the local newspaper Strengnäs Tidning. Used by Collins Publishers as a publicity image for the release of The Tightrope Men in 1973, the photograph was again used in promotional material for the release of The Snow Tiger in 1975.
Morelius (1931- 2012), a Captain in the Swedish Army, founded the Swedish crime fiction publication DAST-magazine in 1967 and had started to correspond with Bagley in 1969. Bagley, together with his wife Joan, visited Iwan and his first wife Inga Morelius at their home, Flodins väg 5, Strängnäs for the first time in May 1972. Arriving on Saturday 27 May they stayed for a week, and Morelius recalls the visit in his book Meeting with Authors and Other People in the Book World. 1
The Bagley’s visited again between 11-15 February 1976, to celebrate Inga’s 40th birthday and for Bagley to conduct research for his novel The Enemy, in which Morelius was to feature as a character.
‘I am Captain Morelius.’ He had watchful grey eyes and a gun in a holster under his jacket. ‘You will come with me.’
I could imagine the expression on the face of the colonel of the Royal Södermanland Regiment if I poked my nose into Strängnäs again. I needed no imagination at all to picture the cold grey eyes of Captain Morelius of Swedish Army Intelligence. 2
The pistol Bagley is shown holding is Morelius’s own weapon, a Husqvarna M/40 9x19mm parabellum pistol, a copy of the Finnish Lahti L-35 designed by Aimo Lahti. Morelius smuggled Bagley onto the P10 (Södermanlands Regiment) military training ground, which also featured in the novel The Enemy. The Husqvarna M/40 pistol itself had been mentioned in Bagley’s 1973 novel The Tightrope Men.
It’s a Husqvarna, Model 40 – Swedish army issue. A nice gun with but one fault – there’s about a sixteenth of an inch play in the barrel. If the barrel is forced back, the trigger won’t pull.’ He pressed the muzzle with the palm of his left hand and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. ‘See!’ 3
Bagley wasn’t the only visitor to be shown this courtesy, previously in August 1970 Morelius had taken Geoffrey Boothroyd, the British firearms expert and advisor to Ian Fleming to the P10 training ground where Boothroyd fired the Husqvarna M/40 and a Kulsprutepistol M/45 also belonging to Morelius. 5 A similar image of Bagley also holding a submachine gun, most likely the same one as Boothroyd fired is also archived in the Desmond Bagley Collection in Boston.
Geoffrey Boothroyd had originally written to Ian Fleming following the publication of his James Bond novel Casino Royale:
‘Dear Mr Fleming,’ he wrote after reading Casino Royale, ‘I wish to point out that a man in James Bond’s position would never consider using a .25 Beretta. It’s really a lady’s gun – and not a very nice lady at that! Dare I suggest that Bond should be armed with a .38 or a nine millimetre – let’s say a German Walther PPK? That’s far more appropriate.’
This was the beginning of a correspondence that would turn Boothroyd, a portly Glaswegian, into James Bond’s armourer, ‘Major Boothroyd’ – ‘the greatest small-arms expert in the world’, as he’s described in Dr No.
And Major Boothroyd would later become known as Q, the gadgets expert played with such delightful exasperation by Desmond Llewelyn in 17 Bond films. Boothroyd also gave invaluable service as weapons adviser on From Russia With Love, explaining the best way to blow up a helicopter. 6
You can read more about Iwan Morelius on Nigel Alefounder’s site here.
