James Bond actor Desmond Llewelyn’s Mayo roots
JAMES Bond actor, the late Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q, the quartermaster of the MI6 gadget lab, in 17 of the highly popular films, has Mayo roots that date back nearly 170 years, writes Tom Gillespie.
And today his son, Ivor (70), a retired Ministry of Agriculture civil servant in the UK, and his wife Geordia, have a hide-away holiday home near Mulranny.
I visited the couple, where Ivor, a keen sailor and angler, reminisced on how the property came into the family and recalled the many visits his father - the 20th anniversary of his death was marked on December 19 - made to the area over the years.
Beginning with From Russia With Love (1963), which starred Sean Connery and Robert Shaw, who later resided in Tourmakeady, Desmond Llewelyn portrayed the character of Q in every official film except Live and Let Die until his death in 1999.
Ivor recalls when his father got the iconic role: "When my father got the part in the first Bond we did not realise how big it was going to be. It started off very small. It was just another job for him. It was fun to do and then he was in the next one.
"I was still at school and I had an autograph from Sean Connery.
"The role was always quite short for my father. He did not do very long stints, usually a couple of weeks filming. The thing about filming is although you might appear in different parts, the scenes were all shot together.
"One of his most enjoyable stints was on Thunderball (1965) when they took him out to the Bahamas for ‘wet weather cover’ as they had so many scenes they could shoot if it was wet. But it doesn’t get wet in the Bahamas and he was there for about six weeks!
"His (fame) just gradually built up and suddenly he found people recognising him.
"He had great strength even though he was getting on in years and he didn’t always feel very well but he never thought that his age was a reason for not doing it. He just sort of got on with it."
Ivor explained how the family originally came to Mayo. "My grandmother on my mother’s side bought this house. My grandmother’s grandfather, John Cather, was a Church of Ireland rector in Westport. He came down from Co. Tyrone in 1851. He was rector in Westport until he died in 1888.
"His son, my great-grandfather, Montiuque Cather, went to Trinity and later became a solicitor and moved to England and actually married his employer’s daughter.
"While my grandmother was brought up in England she always used to come over here and visit relations. That was before the First Word War and she had a lot of relations still in Westport. John Cather had seven children. All the boys left and the girls married local men.
"My grandmother always wanted a place here and she bought this place in 1953. It was an amazing place.
"I first came here in 1954 when I was five. We used to borrow the donkey from a neighbour, Delia Moran. We would ride the donkey. There were other riders and they had a horse, a little pony. We would pick them up and ride them bare-back on the road, and down on the strand. This was a time when the old road to Currane was not made up at all. They had just completed this road. It was completely different times."
Ivor continued: "My dad didn’t really spend a lot of time here. He was working. In the 1950s he did a long run in a play called The Spiders’ Web, by Agatha Christy. I think he was in it for about three years and the did lots of touring.
"It was quite tricky. He would come over for about two weeks. Even so, if you are an actor you always want to keep in touch. Every evening he used to go down to the post office in Mulranny, because we hadn’t got a phone, and a call would be put through to England. It was always a bit unreliable. He was checking was there any work, did they want you."
The Llewelyn house in Mulranny was much smaller then. His parents built an extension in the 1970s.
Ivor went on: "My grandmother died in 1962 and my mother, Pamela, inherited the house. My brother inherited it from her when she passed away in 2001. I bought my brother out and here we are now."
Ivor used to be a civil servant with the Ministry of Agriculture and ended up doing a lot of work on fisheries and then worked with the Atlantic Salmon Trust. He retired two years ago.
Ivor’s two sons, Hugh and Rory, also visit Mulranny. He said: "We spent three or four months here. I like coming in the winter months as there are less people around. I like everything about coming here.
"I like the scenery and the location. It is a place I feel at home in. I have a boat and I sail in Clew Bay, which is fantastic and a really interesting place."
Desmond lived just opposite Ivor in England and he remembers once asking would he be joining them for lunch on Sunday: "He looked puzzled and then said ‘No, I thing I'm in Los Angeles’. He was well into his 80s then.
"My father loved it here, even though he didn't sail or fish. Very successful actors work flat out but my father had a niche and was successful but like a lot of actors he had a lot of down time. It was in his old age he got promotional work and was invited to do festivals."
Desmond Llewelyn was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, the son of Mia (née Wilkinson) and Ivor Llewelyn, who was a coal mining engineer.
He originally wanted to be a minister, but during his education he worked as a stage-hand in the school's productions and occasionally picked up small roles.
The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 halted his acting career. Llewelyn was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British Army, serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. In 1940, he was captured by the Germans in France and was held as a prisoner of war for five years in the infamous Colditz Castle in Germany.
Llewelyn was chosen for the role of Q because of his work with director Terence Young in the 1950 war film They Were Not Divided, in which he played a tank gunner.
Llewelyn was the only actor in the original Bond series to have worked alongside five of the actors who played the spy - Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.
His last appearance as Q prior to his death was in The World Is Not Enough in 1999. During his briefing of 007 in the film, Q introduces John Cleese's character, R, as his heir presumptive.
Llewelyn had stated not long before his death that he had no plans to retire and that he would continue playing Q ‘as long as the producers want me and the Almighty doesn’t’.
Despite playing an inventor in the Bond films, Llewelyn always maintained that he was totally lost in the world of technology, a trait that also plagued his successors, John Cleese and Ben Whishaw.
On December 19, 1999, Llewelyn was driving home alone from a book signing event when his car was involved in a head-on collision with another car, driven by a 35-year-old man, on the A27 near the village of Berwick, East Sussex.
Despite attention from a doctor at the scene and being taken by helicopter to Eastbourne District General Hospital, he died shortly after at the age of 85. The other driver was seriously injured.
His death occurred three weeks after the première of The World Is Not Enough. Roger Moore, who starred with Llewelyn in six of his seven Bond films, spoke at his funeral on January 6, 2000, at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Battle, Sussex. The service was followed by a private cremation at Hastings Crematorium, with the ashes given to Llewelyn's family.
His widow, Pamela Mary Llewelyn, died in East Sussex in 2001, aged 85.