How James Bond’s longest-running ‘Q’ survived 5 excruciating years as a POW

The Germans held Desmond Llewelyn captive for most of World War II.

Llewelyn was a prisoner of war long before he gained fame by playing James Bond’s gadget master, “Q,” in 17 movies. He was already an actor when he became a second lieutenant with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, an infantry regiment in the British army. Llewelyn planned to resume his career once he and the other POWs got out of captivity.

He just didn’t know when.

First captured in France in 1940, Llewelyn’s confinement stretched into years before American troops arrived. Not sure whether the prisoners were actually who they claimed or were Nazis posing as captives, a U.S. soldier asked Llewelyn how long he was a POW. Five years, Llewelyn responded.

“The war’s only been on three years,” the service member replied.

A Captive for 5 Years

For anyone with a sense of military history, they realize Llewelyn was correct. The British entered World War II in 1939, two years before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ direct involvement in the war.

Born seven weeks after World War I broke out in 1914, Llewelyn grew up in South Wales. He studied to become an accountant, but analyzing financial figures didn’t energize him the way acting did. Llewelyn wanted to be on stage or in front of a camera.

He barely got the chance before joining the British military. Llewelyn hadn’t been in uniform a full year before the Nazis captured him. They first sent Llewelyn to an officers camp.

“I spent quite a bit of time trying to escape, digging tunnels and things like that,” Llewelyn recalled to Double-O-Seven magazine in 2000. “I was actually caught down a tunnel and dug out, which landed me in the cooler for 10 days.”

That act of defiance also earned Llewelyn a reassignment to Oflag IV C, a prison camp at Colditz Castle in Germany. No matter Llewelyn’s level of cunning and ingenuity, that high-security facility was too secure for him to figure a way out.

Looking for His Big Break

Llewelyn did some acting during his imprisonment, and once he became free again, he was eager to do more. For the rest of the 1940s and throughout the 1950s, he became a well-known face in Britain, appearing in numerous television series and movies.

Llewelyn, though, was nowhere near a star performer. He didn’t give off lead-actor vibes, but that was OK because he was consistently working. His big break came when Peter Burton, who played MI6’s Major Geoffrey Bootroyd (Q’s real name) in the first James Bond film, “Dr. No,” in 1962, couldn’t reprise the role in “From Russia with Love” the following year.

Looking for a replacement, former British navy intelligence officer Ian Fleming—author of the James Bond books—and director Terence Young settled on Llewelyn. Young and Llewelyn previously worked together on the war movie “They Were Not Divided.” Their relationship led to the biggest break of Llewelyn’s career, although the former POW wasn’t shy about expressing how he wanted Q to sound.

“My interpretation of the character was that of a toffee-nosed English[man],” Llewelyn once recounted. “At the risk of losing the part and with silent apologies to my native land, I launched into Q’s lines using the worst Welsh accent, followed by the same in English.”

Llewelyn won that disagreement.

A Consistent Presence in the Bond Universe

No actor has appeared in more James Bonds than Llewelyn. He entertained fans worldwide as Q (short for “Quartermaster”) in movies spanning an impressive 36 years. From “From Russia with Love” in 1963 to “The World Is Not Enough” in 1999, Q was always there to hand Bond the latest in spy gear.

He provided Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and finally Pierce Brosnan with some of the coolest stuff imaginable. As Q, the first gadget that Llewelyn ever showed Connery was a special briefcase replete with weapons and an anti-tampering tear gas canister. Llewelyn said the grenade pen from 1995’s “GoldenEye” was his favorite tool that Q ever provided to America’s favorite British Secret Service agent.

Just don’t expect Llewelyn to know how any of that stuff actually worked.

“I’m hopeless with gadgets,” Llewelyn once confessed. “I can’t even get a ticket to work in one of those confounded machines on the London Underground. And I can hardly put on a kettle, let alone set a video.”

Keeping the Fantasy of Bond Alive

Although he sometimes felt typecast, Llewelyn told People magazine that he intended to keep playing Q “as long as the producers want me and the Almighty doesn’t.”

Tragically, the Almighty intervened. Llewelyn died in 1999 from internal injuries that he sustained in a car crash, one month after “The World Is Not Enough” was released in Britain. Llewelyn was 85 years old.

Until the end, the former POW savored his key role in the James Bond universe.

“You must keep fantasy with Bond, and not only fantasy, but pure relaxation, enjoyment,” Llewelyn said, according to IMDB. “What you see on the screen is something that you don’t have in this world today. You can just sit back and enjoy it.”

The next James Bond movie could be released as early as 2027.

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