MI6 HEADQUARTERS, LONDON

Contributed by: The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia by Steven Jay Rubin

Real-life headquarters of the British Secret Service at 85 Vauxhall Cross, along the Albert Embankment in Vauxhall, which has made an appearance in several Bond films. It’s partially blown up in the pre-credits teaser of The World Is Not Enough—a scene that was apparently almost blocked by the real MI6. According to the London Daily Telegraph, when administrators learned that a scene from the film would be shot around their headquarters building, they tried to prohibit filming, citing a security risk. However, foreign secretary Robin Cook, at the urging of arts minister Janet Anderson, moved to overrule them and allow the shoot; the Telegraph quoted a source close to Cook as saying, “After all Bond has done for Britain, it was the least we could do for Bond.”[1]

That same building is attacked again in Skyfall, when cyberterrorist Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) hacks into MI6’s computer systems and triggers a gas explosion to send a message to M (Dame Judi Dench). By the next film, Spectre, the damaged structure has been abandoned in favor of a new high-tech high-rise headquarters nearby. At the conclusion of the story, Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) triggers explosives that demolish the building and nearly kill Bond (Daniel Craig) and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux).


[1] Robert Shrimsley, “James Bond Turns the Big Guns on MI6,” London Daily Telegraph, April 23, 1999.

SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app