A hero is only as interesting as the villains he defeats, and surely one of the key reasons for the enduring interest in the heroic exploits of James Bond is the variety of colourful enemies he has outfoxed over the years. Be they megalomaniacs or psychopaths, uncommon crooks or freaks of nature, Bond’s antagonists have always held a mirror to the fears and preoccupations of the times, and with their fantastic flaws and grandiose schemes, have always given us cause to laugh. Here’s a list of the ten best baddies who have been defeated by 007 for her Majesty’s protection - and our viewing pleasure.

10. Sir Hugo Drax (Moonraker, 1979)

Sir Hugo Drax had it all: immense wealth, a lavish estate, a royal knighthood, and an enduring fascination with establishing a new form of human civilization. Drax planned to destroy all humankind with an exotic poison, then to repopulate the earth with a new master race waiting aboard his space station, like some sort of Noah’s Ark for the space age. As played by the actor Michael Lonsdale, the seriousness of Drax’s demeanour was matched only by the sheer stupidity of his scheme and the obvious criminality in his choice of costumier.

9. Mr Wint and Mr Kidd (Diamonds Are Forever, 1971)

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Philosophical, poetic and psychotic, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd were the deadly duo serving Bond’s arch-enemy Blofeld. More clever and creative than the average henchman, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd disposed of their targets in a number of imaginative ways, from live cremation to stinging by scorpion. After each murder, the ever polite couple would commemorate their act with a moralising aphorism, as though they were their very own deranged Greek chorus. In their final attempt to murder 007 disguised as waiters, Bond uncovers their fraud with his superior knowledge of wine, then hastens their demise with his lethal handling of a flaming shashlik skwere and a booby-trapped bombe dessert. Revenge is a dish better served cold, after all.

8. Rosa Klebb (From Russia with Love, 1963)

Over the course of many Bond films, 007 has confronted numerous female adversaries – henchwomen, as it were – most of whom have suffered the indignity of bearing even more ludicrous names than their male counterparts: May Day, Jenny Flex, Xenia Onatopp and, of course, Pussy Galore. But while Rosa Klebb was not entirely immune to this misfortune (her name is a pun on the Russian for ‘bread and roses’, the slogan for the international labour movement), she did escape the other calamity likely to befall other henchwomen: seduction by James Bond. Rosa Klebb was a ruthless and remorseless killer who joined the SPECTRE organisation after defecting from the Soviet counter-intelligence agency. She is best remembered for attempting to kill James Bond with a pair of poison-tipped daggers concealed in her shoes, an attempt which was thwarted by her former protégée Tatiana.

7. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977)

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man born with webbed-fingers, Karl Stromberg was obsessed with the ocean, where he lived in a futuristic submersible fortress, surrounded by marine life and removed from the company of humans, whose annihilation he plotted to bring about by provoking a nuclear war between the Americans and the Soviets. The character of Stromberg was especially created for the film, which bears little resemblance with Fleming’s original book, so there is little coincidence that Stromberg has much in common with earlier Bond villains. Played icily by Curt Jurgens, the character of Stromberg was more than the sum of his parts, and proved a worthy and distinctive adversary for 007.

6. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977, and Moonraker, 1979)

The only henchman to appear in two Bond films was Jaws, the 7-feet-2-inch behemoth with the mouth of steel. As Stromberg’s henchman in The Spy Who Loved Me, Jaws was a fearsome and seemingly invincible foe who could brush aside any misfortune that befell him, from being crushed beneath an ancient Egyptian monument, to being thrown from speeding trains and high clifftops. But, as a sign of the camp silliness of the Bond franchise in the 70s, by the time Jaws returned in Moonraker as a minion of Drax, he was reduced to a farcical figure who fell in love with a blonde ingénue and who ultimately sided with 007 to defeat Drax.

5. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974)

Known to the world’s intelligence agencies only as ‘The Man with the Golden gun’, Francisco Scaramanga was a secretive hitman who enjoyed notoriety as the most dangerous and expensive assassin in the world. Believing he needed only a single bullet to complete each job, he preferred to murder his targets with a gold-plated single-shot pistol which could be disassembled into a pen, a lighter, cuff links and a cigarette case for easy disguise. Played with suave arrogance by Christopher Lee, a cousin of Ian Fleming, Scaramanga shared many similarities with 007: he was a cultured man with expensive tastes, and matched Bond’s own abilities as an assassin.

4. Dr. No (Dr. No, 1962)

The mad scientist par excellence, Dr. Julius No was Bond’s first on-screen antagonist, and is still one of the most memorable. A nuclear physicist with powerful metallic claws for hands – the legacy of a ‘freakish’ laboratory accident – Dr. No joined the villainous organization SPECTRE after his scientific services were rejected by both the Americans and Soviets. In revenge, he established an island lair in Jamaica, as any self-respecting evil genius must, and plotted to sabotage the launch of American rockets at nearby Cape Canaveral. While his end was hardly Shakespearean, there was a certain poetic justice to Dr. No’s demise, as he was undone by his own atomic obsession, boiling to death in the coolant tank of his own nuclear reactor.

3. Oddjob (Goldfinger, 1964)

A Bond film hardly seems worthy of the name unless it comes complete with a henchman armed with a gimmick. The Bond franchise has given life to all sorts of henchmen: some intimidating, others incredible; some scary, others just plain silly (yes, Goldie, I’m referring to you). But surely the best and most memorable of them all is Oddjob, the burly bodyguard of Auric Goldfinger, who combined genuine menace, sheer physical strength, and a unique killing method in the form of a flying razor-rimmed bowler hat. Although Oddjob, played by Olympic silver-medallist weight-lifter Harold Sakata, was apparently impervious to 007’s physical blows, he was vulnerable to Bond’s greater guile, and he was electrocuted to death in the vaults beneath Fort Knox.

2. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger, 1964)

With his all-consuming Midas Complex, Auric Goldfinger is another of the Bond villains who has earned a spot in the pantheon of greatest film foes. Not content to smuggle gold in the bodywork of a gold-plated Rolls Royce or to murder his treacherous assistant by smothering her in gold paint, Goldfinger schemed to increase the value of his own gold stocks by detonating a dirty nuclear bond inside the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, enlisting the help of Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus to do so.

1. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia with Love, 1963, and Thunderball, 1965, and You Only Live Twice, 1967, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1969, and Diamonds Are Forever, 1971, and For Your Eyes Only, 1981)

As head of the global criminal organization SPECTRE, Ernst Stavro Blofeld is 007’s nemesis, and the arch-villain of the Bond film franchise. He has appeared in six Bond films played by four different actors (Eric Pohlmann, Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas, and Charles Gray), and has become, with his trademark white Persian cat, grey collarless Nehru jacket, and large swivelling black armchair, one of the most imitated and parodied villains in cinema history. Without Blofeld, we’d have no Dr Evil in Austin Powers, no Dr Claw in Inspector Gadget, and no Mugatu in Zoolander. His grandiose schemes, unusual appearance and sheer persistence have earned Ernst Stavro Blofeld a permanent place in popular culture as the greatest of James Bond’s adversaries.