The spy with the bullet-proof Rolls-Royce

‘Biffy’ Dunderdale (1899-1991) was a legend in his own lifetime within MI6. Born in Odessa to an Austrian countess and a British trader representing Vickers, his cosmopolitan upbringing endowed him with English, Russian, German, Turkish, French and Polish. His real first name was Wilfred, Biffy being acquired through youthful handiness with his fists.

Education and family connections made him intimate with prominent Levantine trading families such as the Whittalls, Keuns and La Fontaines. Members of each served with him in MI6 and two into modern times. Early in the first world war he was studying naval architecture and engineering in St Petersburg when his father sent him to oversee the assembling of submarines sold in kit form to the Russians. The 16-year-old Biffy manned one of the boats with a dockyard crew, took it out for sea trials, spotted German ships and sank four. On returning to port they became entangled in anti-submarine nets and were stuck on the bottom for 18 hours. Biffy was granted the equivalent of a knighthood by the Tsar.

In 1918, back in Odessa, he was taken on by the Admiralty’s Naval Intelligence Division, which worked closely with MI6, to support Russian counter-revolutionary forces. Commissioned the following year, he was promoted and awarded the MBE for preventing a Bolshevik mutiny on another submarine. Although he may already have been working for MI6, he was formally inducted in 1921 and posted to what was then Constantinople, where one of his early tasks was to arrange the clandestine exfiltration of the Sultan, who feared for his fate in the new republic. This done, he then had the delicate task of evacuating the European ladies of the Sultan’s harem to their various destinations. A pocketful of gold sovereigns helped ensure that the British ladies were safely embarked on the Orient Express.