Guy Hamilton

Mervyn Ian Guy Hamilton, DSC (16 September 1922 – 20 April 2016) was an English film director. He directed 22 films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including four James Bond films. Early life Hamilton was born in Paris on 16 September 1922, son of Frederick William Guy Hamilton (1895-1988), press attaché to the British embassy in Paris and Captain in the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, and Winifred Grace Culling (1895-1970), daughter of William Archibald Culling Fremantle, of the Church Missionary Society in India. His mother was a great-granddaughter of the Christian campaigner Sir Culling Eardley, 3rd Baronet, and of the politician Thomas Fremantle, 1st Baron Cottesloe. His parents divorced in 1923, and Hamilton attended school in England. His first exposure to the film industry came in 1938, when he was a clapperboard boy at the Victorine Studios in Nice. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Hamilton escaped from France by the MV Saltersgate, a collier bound for French North Africa; one of the other 500 refugees aboard was W. Somerset Maugham. Having travelled from Oran to Gibraltar before arriving in London, he worked in the film library at Paramount News before being commissioned in the Royal Navy; he served in the 15th Motor Torpedo Boat 718 Flotilla, a unit that ferried agents into France and brought downed British pilots back to England.