It would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but one of Ireland’s most republican counties is celebrating the life of the founder of Britain’s intelligence agencies.

William Melville was born in the Kerry village of Sneem to a publican’s family and fled his roots to forge a stellar career in London as a detective fighting terrorism.

When he “retired” in 1903 from the Metropolitan Police at the height of his fame, he went on to establish the forerunner of MI5, providing the inspiration for James Bond’s boss in Ian Fleming’s books.

“Melville was referred to by the War Office as M or the Spy-master from almost the beginning,” Andrew Cook, the author of M: MI5’s First Spy-master, said.

The exhibition at Kerry County Museum grew out of Cook’s biography, for which he was given access to secret MI5 files that will never be released.

“Although a Kerryman born and bred, he has been a forgotten figure and we now have an opportunity to illuminate a fascinating history,” Helen O’Carroll, curator at Kerry County Museum, said.

“One of the striking issues in the Melville story is the irony that here is an Irish Catholic who was proud of his Irish identity, defending Britain from terrorist threats that included Irish terrorism.

“As a Kerryman, Melville is part of our story and, to fit him in, we must acknowledge that Irish identity encompassed a broader spectrum in the past, as indeed we are beginning to recognise that it does in the present.”

Melville was born in Sneem in 1850, a “poor, dirty village” according to one contemporary account. He was known as a great hurling player. He disappeared one day when he was in his teens, abandoning the family pony and cart at Killarney railway station on the weekly trip to collect supplies.

In 1872 he reemerged in the public record as a London police officer and by 1883 had been invited to join the Special Irish Branch, which targeted Fenian and, later, anarchist bomb plots in Britain.

In an era of random terrorist attacks Melville’s fame quickly grew. The novelist Joseph Conrad was fascinated by the almost daily newspaper reports of his exploits and based the detective in The Secret Agent on him.

Melville’s most famous exploit was his foiling of the Jubilee Plot of 1887, an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria by Irish republicans. It has since been argued that the attempt was a “dirty war” operation orchestrated by the Government.

Times Recommends

• Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'
• 'Delayed justice' fear for OJ Simpson
• Sex and the sari