My Word is My Bond; Last Man Standing; and À Bientôt … by Roger Moore: book reviews

This is a Roger Moore trilogy to mark the end of the year of his death. It is a review of his three autobiographies: My Word is My Bond (2008); Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (2014); and À Bientôt … (2017).

My Word is My Bond (2008) is the memoir of British actor Sir Roger Moore (1927-2017), who portrayed James Bond in the spy movies based on the books of Ian Fleming. Moore replaced Sean Connery and starred as 007 in six Bond movies from 1972-1985. His first was Live and Let Die.  

Moore begins writing this memoir at the age of 80. He starts briefly with his childhood illnesses before moving quickly into his early acting years from 1944 and his first MGM movie in Hollywood at the age of 26 – The Last Time I Saw Paris (an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1930 short story, Babylon Revisited).

He writes of his TV hits, first Ivanhoe (1958-1959), and then as Simon Templar in The Saint (1962-1969) before launching into his first Bond movie which started filming in 1972, told in a detailed and comic way. He follows briefly with The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and in more depth with The Spy who Loved Me (1977). He moves onto Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985) – as well as the films in between his Bond series.

Moore only briefly touches on the evolution of the Bond movies, as this memoir focuses more on the cast of characters and his interactions with them. He wrote Bond on Bond: The Ultimate Book on 50 Years of Bond Movies (2012), which covers all things Bond. Two-thirds into this book, the Bond movies are over and he writes about ‘taking stock’ of his life as an actor as he transitions into the post-Bond years. He focuses on his role as a UNICEF ambassador, cancer, and his last marriage to Kristina Tholstrup in 2002.

In Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (2014) Roger Moore pays tribute in this memoir to the film stars and celebrities who died before him. However, this is far from being a morbid account of the people he befriended. Moore is now 86 years old and this is his second autobiography.

He starts in 1954 with the leading female stars – Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner, Dinah Sheridan, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Joan Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Shelley Winters, and Diana Dors. He writes of London’s Pinewood Studios, which became home to many stars – Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton. He continues with friends David Niven, Gregory Peck, Trevor Howard, and Ray Milland.

Moore mentions noted film directors and producers, particularly Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman during the James Bond movies.

Roger Moore’s final autobiography is À Bientôt … (2017) published posthumously after his death on 23 May 2017, at the age of 90. This is a collection of memories.

It is about landmark events – the introduction of television, the second World War, the moon landing, the Cold War, and the beginning of the internet. It is about his earliest memories of smells and sounds, as well as sights at the local cinema.

War time memories dominated Moore’s teenage years, but he focuses mostly on travelling memories – buses, trains and planes.

This autobiography has many more photographs than the previous two memoirs, as well as magazine advertisements, and his own drawings and sketches. It is also the first time that he extensively writes of his family.

Moore ends with a list of things that have annoyed him over the years, and a list of things no-one told him about getting old.

I enjoyed reading Roger Moore’s autobiographies back-to-back, showing the evolution of his style and the events and people that have been influential in his life and career. The three books are also reminiscent of a time in film and television in which actors transitioned from commercials to stage to television to dramas to film to television to dramas to commercials: everything has it revolution. And as we begin, so we end.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).