À BIENTôT

book ROGER MOORE WITH GARETH OWEN | Michael Mara

The late Sir Roger’s post-Bond screen credits weren’t anything to write home about, the likes of Spice World, Bullseye! and the abysmal Boat Trip showing a penchant for self-parody that was decidedly hit and miss.

Yet Moore’s winter years saw him enjoy far greater success as a raconteur and memoirist, a gift this posthumously published monograph illustrates to heart-warming, engaging and occasionally moving effect.

True, some of his musings on airport security, mobile phones and other modern bugbears do plunge his last tome deep into grumpy old men territory. (“Would Q have come up with something as deeply frustrating as the self-service till?” begins one typical tirade.) Reminiscences on his mother’s home cooking, swimming in the Thames and getting felt up at the pictures, meanwhile, are couched in a manner that suggests his bifocals may have been a little rose-tinted at the time of co-writing. That being said, his reflections on Brexit – “More good than bad has come out of the UK being a[n EU] member state”

– are refreshingly broad-minded.

If you’re after titbits on Moore’s movie career, you are better off reading 2008 autobiography My Word Is My Bond. Yet A Bientôt does earn kudos for box-outs on the films he didn’t get to make: an intriguing list of might-havebeens that includes Home Alone 2, Escape To Victory and a Frankenstein spin-off called Victor. Neil Smith