According to Sony's biography of NuBond on the
Casino Royale website, he served on HMS Exeter during Operation Granby (the Navy's code name for the first Gulf War). I looked on Wikipedia and it said that the captain he would have served under was Nigel Essenhigh, now Admiral Sir Nigel Essenhigh. Here's a picture of him:
A possible replacement for Not Barbara Mawdesley as M? Just for fun, I ran MyHeritage.com's celebrity face matching tool on that picture. The closest actor I got was...Tom Berenger! Hmm, wonder if he could do a British accent? (edit: He actually reminds me more of Christopher Lee, but having Scaramanga as M would be weird).
