Courtesy of Wikipedia: Lampost outside the front of the University Womens Building on Audley Square
In a delicious twist of fate, a Victorian lamppost by Audley Square contains an ironic secret.
During the cold war the USSR had numerous secret agents operating in the UK and while some worked as diplomats at the Russian embassy, others did not, and needed a way to communicate with their superiors.
They couldn’t exactly wander up to the embassy which would have been closely monitored by MI5, so they used ‘dead letter drops’ like this lamppost on South Audley Street. Here they left documents behind a small door at the back of the lamppost then made a chalk mark at the base to indicate a message was waiting, Simples.
The ironic twist? Based in Audley Square at that time, just opposite the lamppost, was the offices of Eon Productions, the film company responsible for the James Bond movies where of course our all-British hero outwits the Russian KGB time after time!
It was at Audley Square in 1962, Sean Connery auditioned for the role as James Bond. The story goes that producers Harry Saltzman & Cubby Broccoli weren’t too impressed but Mrs Broccoli watching Connery arrive from the top floor window, liked the way he walked and that was enough – he got the part!