Sean Connery's memoir is surprising, not least because the actor emerges from its thoughtful pages as self-taught: how inspiring

John Sutherland writing in guardian.co.uk,
Sunday August 31 2008

I had the misfortune to appear at the Edinburgh Festival of Books shortly before Sean Connery. I suppose it's better than sweeping up behind the circus elephant. But it does diminish a man.The publishers timed the release of Connery's book about Connery, Being a Scot, to coincide with the Festival.

The author duly packed away his clubs and flew in to launch it, to a chock-a-block house (Alex Salmond in the front row). They could have taken over Murrayfield, and filled it.Being a Scot is a surprising memoir.

"Not David Niven," one reviewer said. Nor is it the standard, ghost-written, fan-fodder. It's thoughtful and – the word is inescapable – cultivated. Connery emerges from its pages as an impressive autodidact.

His origins are famous. Brought up in an Edinburgh slum (Fountainbridge – only the name is beautiful), he left school at 13. They taught him to read. For which he is grateful. Connery embarked on his secondary and higher education when a fellow actor, Robert Henderson, gave him a must-read list – and, at the same time, told him to lose the gutter-Scots accent.

The first worked out better than the last. Connery duly ploughed his way through Great Books 101. Actors "rest" not just between jobs, but on the job. There's a lot of waiting till the camera rolls.

Connery improved the shining hour, turning pages. Or, when doing The Name of the Rose, chewing over niceties of postmodernism with Umberto Eco.

Read the full piece at the Guardian online.