Long before he started work for the secret services, Britain's best-loved fictional spy lost his parents in a climbing accident in the French Alps, orphaning him at the age of eleven.

Now it appears that the James Bond recruitment method was used by MI5, as a new book reveals how the real life M specialised in hiring agents who had lost a parent at a young age because he believed it bred loyalty and meant that they viewed their spymaster as a "father figure".

Maxwell Knight, a highly skilled spymaster who was known to his colleagues as M, is thought to have provided the inspiration Ian Flemming's character.