Literary Locations #5: The College of Arms

The College of Arms

130 Queen Victoria Street

London

EC4V 4BT

 

Website: www.college-of-arms.gov.uk

 

“The College of Arms is in Queen Victoria Street on the fringe of the City. It is a pleasant little Queen Anne backwater in ancient red brick with white sashed windows and a convenient cobbled courtyard, where Bond parked his car.”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ian Fleming (Jonathan Cape, 1963)

View of the College from Queen Victoria Street

The College of Arms is a royal corporation which is the official repository of the coats of arms and pedigrees of English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Commonwealth families and their descendants. The officers of the College specialise in genealogical and heraldic work which they undertake for their clients.

 

The first edition of On Her
Majesty's Secret Service

The College and its work features prominently in Ian Fleming’s eleventh James Bond novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service both as a setting and plot device. Having been despatched to the College by M, Bond is initially unaware of the reason for his visit and is quizzed by one of the College officers – who rejoices under the archaic title of Griffon Or – about his own family background. This amusing interchange provides Fleming with the pretext to provide us with some details of Bond’s roots. For instance we learn that he has “no connexion with Peckham” and that his “father was a Scot” who “came from the Highlands, near Glencoe” and that his “mother was Swiss”. Griffon Or believes that Bond will be anxious to establish whether he is related to Sir Thomas Bond, who gave his name to Bond Street in London’s West End and whose family motto is Orbis non sufficit or “the World is not enough”. The Bond coat of arms and motto provided the basis for Richard Chopping's cover design for the book's first edition.

After this initial misunderstanding Bond learns from another of the College’s officers, Sable Basilisk, that his arch enemy Blofeld has designs on the title of “le Comte de Bleuville” and has asked the College to validate his claim. This provides Bond with the opportunity to pose as “Sir Hilary Bray” - an envoy of the College – and thereby gain access to Blofeld’s mountain-top lair Piz Gloria.

The College, which has stood in its present location since 1555, looks very much as it did in Fleming’s day with the most recent addition being the gates which were erected in 1956 - although modern visitors will be unlikely to regard the present day Queen Victoria Street as a “backwater”!

Rating (out of 10): 4

Literary Locations #4: John le Carré’s “Circus”

Trentishoe Mansions

90 Charing Cross Road

London

WC2H 0JE

In John le Carré’s classic trilogy of novels featuring George Smiley as the mild mannered but mentally agile spy, the “circus” is the term used to refer to the British secret intelligence service MI6. The name derives from the proximity of its headquarters to Cambridge Circus, a traffic intersection in central London. However, le Carré provides a number of clues in his novels that enable us to pinpoint the exact building that he had in mind.

The junction of Charing Cross Road
and the former Little Compton Street

"an hexagonal pepper pot overlooking New
Compton street and the Charing Cross Road"

Firstly, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy we are told that Smiley’s colleague Bill Haydon has an office which is “an hexagonal pepper pot overlooking New Compton Street and the Charing Cross Road”. Although today these two roads do not intersect, New Compton Street was once joined with Old Compton Street by Little Compton Street, which has now vanished beneath an office block. In The Honourable Schoolboy, the circus is described as being housed in an “Edwardian mausoleum”. At the junction of Charing Cross Road and what was once Little Compton Street stands an Edwardian block of flats named Trentishoe Mansions and, if you look up to the roof, you can see a small turret resembling the description of Haydon’s lair.



"A dull doorway in the Charing Cross Road"

Further corroboration is provided when, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, we are told that the circus’ archives are not accessible from the main entrance but are “reached by a dull doorway in the Charing Cross Road jammed between a picture-framer and an all-day café”. Although the commercial spaces are currently occupied by a musical instruments shop and a West End ticket agency, the doorway is still much as le Carré describes.

However, whilst the building itself exists, its role as a spy headquarters is a fictional construct as MI6 were never based in these residential flats. However, the building does have another literary connection in that it is adjacent to the former site of the antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co which featured in Helene Hanff’s book 84, Charing Cross Road, which documented a twenty year correspondence between Hanff and the shop’s chief buyer Frank Doel. Although Marks & Co has long since closed, the story is commemorated by a circular brass plaque on the wall.

 

Rating (out of 10): 6