By way of preface, Christopher Lee recalls an exchange he had with a PR woman for United Artists, during a publicity tour of the US to promote the Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. "You're writing an autobiography?" she inquired. "Who's it about?" From this, and the title, we gather that Lee aspires to the sort of astringent wit which made David Niven's biographical writings so entertaining and compelling. He doesn't quite make it, but at least he has the decency to try, and he has a nice line in wry insider anecdotes: "Good, bad and astonishing direction has fallen to my lot. The most succinct was from an overworked Stuart Burge on Julius Caesar. He clove his way through a throng of people to say to me, `Of course, you do realise, don't you, that Artemidorus is quite, quite mad?' and passed on, without ever speaking to me again."
By Arminta Wallace