Sean Connery’s new book leaves his story untold

The former James Bond hero likes to match up to a constructed persona so it is little wonder his forthcoming book is short on personal detail - reports The Times.

Sean Connery has once again found himself on the receiving end of media criticism, this time because his forthcoming book with Murray Grigor is more about his personal reflections on being Scottish, rather than about who he is as a man, and much has been made of what it isn’t rather than what it is. It is understandable in a way, I suppose, because the man does have a story to tell about himself.

I first encountered Sean in the 1980s. I was a foster/adoptive parent and knew there was insufficient support out there for people who took on very disturbed children. So I set up a charity to provide what local authorities didn’t.

I wrote to Connery and Jackie Stewart — as well as every other prominent Scot I could think of — explaining that these kids were a lost resource, future doctors, inventors, even actors and racing drivers who wouldn’t be given a chance. The result was that their fund, the Scottish International Education Trust, gave my charity a few thousand over three years.

After that Connery and I kept in touch, mainly by letter. For years I nagged him about doing a book, with someone I consider to be Scotland’s premier writer, and I used every ploy I could think of.

He was sick of unauthorised biographies coming out, most full of fantasy, fabrication and downright lies. I told him that would continue until he spoke himself. But he would have to do an honest book. If he left gaps all those suspicious journalists out there would plough their way through to find out what juicy things he was hiding.

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly bothered or impressed by his stardom. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, even Paul Newman, he ain’t. I was never a fan of 007 — they were lads’ movies after all — and I think his acting is limited. He turned in a couple of brilliant performances in The Hill and The Offence, but the public didn’t like them, so he went back to more commercial movies. He has a presence, though, and the story of how he rose from his beginnings in Edinburgh to where he is now had to be interesting, at least.

There’s a strand running through Connery that I think Scots recognise. They get him in ways other nationalities don’t. I don’t think he likes this much. I believe he prefers to hide behind the carefully crafted image, and he seems slightly uncomfortable with the idea that Scots in particular glimpse the real man.

I didn’t give up, and when he had turned down my writer friend once again I wrote to him asking if he had taken leave of his senses. He replied: “Dear Meg, Thank you for assault and battery by post . . .” He still didn’t give in, and neither did I.

Finally, possibly because he discovered that his former wife, Diane Cilento, was writing her autobiography, he agreed to do the book with my friend, only to pull out when he couldn’t contact him. It was a very Sean moment. He felt he’d been made a fool of, though I couldn’t see why.

I think when you are treated like a god for years you forget that other people have other priorities.

I believe Connery’s been in that mindset too long to change now, but there’s more to it than that. I believe there’s an insecurity about the man that comes, I’m sure, from his early life in Edinburgh. He may wear expensive clothes, travel first class and stay at the best hotels, but underneath he’s Big Tam from Fountainbridge, whether he likes it or not.

Cilento tells of getting Connery to see RD Laing, the Scots psychiatrist, in the 1960s. Connery came out with a childhood story that clearly haunted him, of stealing sweets and comics and hiding them under the blanket on his baby brother Neil’s pram. His mother, the redoubtable Effie, gave him a sound hammering in the street, then dragged him back to the shop, where he was made to return the booty and apologise to the shopkeeper.

To anyone else that would be a funny story, one of those tales that passes into family lore, but there was the adult Connery, a highly successful actor, living in some comfort with a beautiful, intelligent wife and young family, and being humiliated by Effie as a child still upset him. Was that, perhaps, the start of his determination to keep himself hidden from public view?

He once said: “The simple fact that my mother never kissed me or held me in her arms when I was a child has had lots of repercussions on my life.” Pointing at a portrait that his second wife, Micheline, painted, he added: “Can you see how my mother has a stern look and Micheline’s mother seems softer? Don’t you think that explains lots of things about me?”

Over the years he has built up a tough guy image that he would find hard to shed after all these years, even if he wanted to. I still had hopes of saving the book with the original writer, so I put some thoughts on paper for him and a few weeks later he called. He saw what I meant and we agreed to discuss it when he came to Scotland in a few weeks. We met at the Rangers chairman David Murray’s Perthshire estate one Saturday. He was pretty relaxed and talkative, telling me he was ready to do the book — but that he would only do it with me.

At one point while we were talking, he leapt up and motioned me over to the window, pointing to a pheasant outside. He was so excited I didn’t mention pheasants were as common as sparrows in that part of the world. There had been a shoot on there that morning and he hadn’t taken part because he couldn’t shoot things. He didn’t mean he lacked skill with a firearm, he meant he didn’t like killing animals.

Then I remembered he did his milk round in Edinburgh with a horse and cart. He was fond of the horse, dressing her up and entering her for competitions, apparently. As a boy he enjoyed riding the horses at his grandfather’s steading in Fife. His brother, Neil, once remarked that Sean’s favourite films as a child were westerns — he had always liked the idea of riding a horse.

When we talked about those days, he said he couldn’t afford to pay for cinema tickets, so he used to take jam jars back to the shops for the deposit of a few pence to finance his trips to “the pictures”. I came from a similar background in Glasgow and did the same thing. He told me he had learnt to read before he went to school and I said I had done the same. It wasn’t until my son was learning to read that I understood that children cracked the code by the shape of words. He asked how they knew how to do that. “Well, I’m told it does require a certain level of intelligence,” I replied. It was a throwaway line, but I was struck by the look of delight on his face — you could keep your Oscars, someone had said he was clever!

And that’s the key to the man, as far as I can tell, his lack of education bothers him. No matter what he has achieved in his life, how much money he has stashed away, he didn’t have the education he would have liked to have and which he wants others to have. As he puts it: “I grew up in the school of life. I came from so low down I could do nothing but go up in life. My life is a mixture of luck and chance. I started work at 12 and left school at 13. I have no education and this is perhaps, when talking to some intellectuals, why I feel like a little boy."

Sean is from my parents’ generation, they were all the same, and my generation fared only slightly better. They had to work hard, usually at unskilled, lowly paid jobs, to get by. Most of them were intelligent far beyond the education they were allowed, so they pinned their hopes on life being better for their kids.

After he asked me to do the book with him he talked a lot, there were frequent phone calls. I told him to write down any of his memories, it didn’t matter about the grammar or the style, just to let the memories flow. He found that hard, emotionally more than anything. So I told him he might feel better talking into a tape recorder, but he felt uncomfortable talking to a piece of plastic.

Despite Connery’s promise to return to an independent Scotland, I don’t believe he will ever come back here to live. He’s been away too long, the Scotland he remembers was 40 years ago, and he’s used to the sun. His attachment to Scotland is sentimental, it’s the exile’s attachment.

He now contents himself with commenting on politics and his dream of Scottish independence, which annoys many people. One SNP MSP told me recently: “Most of us wish he’d shut up. Every time he opens his mouth Labour just say, ‘He doesn’t live here,’ and we’re buggered.” Another remarked: “He’s a loose cannon, we can’t control anything he says, but he thinks he’s speaking for us.” A bit harsh, I think, as is the clamour whenever he gives an opinion on the state of Scotland.

Why shouldn’t he voice his opinions? If it was your father or grandfather, you would just smile and shrug your shoulders, yet he gets attacked from all sides in a reaction that’s out of all proportion to whatever he has said.

The fact that he talks positively about Scotland is also often overlooked, the view in some quarters seems to be that because he’s a rich exile he has no right to say anything about the land of his birth. Nobody has to listen — after all, he’s just talking, not force-feeding the universe with dogma that they must accept on pain of death. But there is something naive about his foray into politics, in that he seems surprised when his attacks and criticisms draw the same in return. Politics is a dirty game. When a Labour opponent hits back, it’s a compliment, it shows points have been scored. Connery, though, seemed hurt, taking offence at remarks by Donald Dewar and Sam Galbraith. What else did he expect?

While in the end our book venture did not get off the ground, working with Connery was an interesting experience for a while. Knowing I disliked the public side of being an author he gave me some advice. His view was that you had to draw a line and not bother with the people below that line, even though you knew they were probably the kind of people you should bother with. I was left wondering how he decided where to draw the line, who should be above and below it, and why. It was a little glimpse into his life that I found a bit sad.

The day after the 2004 Academy Awards, where he had presented Catherine Zeta-Jones with her Oscar, he called me from LA, asking if I had seen him. I said I’d watch the television repeat later. He had just put the phone down after speaking to Steven Spielberg about the next (now current) Indiana Jones film and I got the impression he was definitely going to reprise his role as Indy’s father. As I put the phone down I wondered what made him feel he had to name-drop and be admired, when there were so many millions out there who already admired him. The obvious answer is that he was being big-headed, but it was the reverse, I think — a measure of the man’s basic insecurity.

He may not always be a nice man, a superhero, but nor is he a monster. He is a flawed human being, just like the rest of us. I don’t think anything will convince him that the public, the Scots public especially, can see the flaws. Ironically, those flaws are the root of their affection for him, and he isn’t sure of that either.

If you look back at the pictures taken of him when he was awarded the freedom of Edinburgh in 1991, it is writ large on his face. For a moment, just a moment, the cameras captured him looking genuinely touched by the reception, coupled with confusion, because he didn’t understand it. For all his big-star persona, I don’t think he ever will.

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