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MI6 previews a new biography of James Bond legend
Sean Connery by Christopher Bray...
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Book Preview: Sean Connery
28th August 2010
Sean Connery - by Christopher Bray
Blurb
Sean Connery's creation of secret agent
James Bond invigorated Britain and its cinema, allowing
a cash-strapped, morale-sapped country in decline to fancy
itself still a player on the world stage. But while Bond
would make Connery the first actor to command a million
dollar-plus fee, the man himself was forever pouring scorn
on the fantasies audiences found it increasingly hard to
separate him from.
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Undaunted, Connery went on to prove
himself one of the cinema’s most relaxed and assured
stars and a guaranteed box-office draw. Moulding and remoulding
his image to fit the contours of the age, Connery has gone
from Sadeian Sixties sex symbol to the sagacious magus
figure to which today’s young stars are forever turning.
For almost fifty years, men around the world
have been measuring themselves against our age’s definition
of masculinity: Sean Connery. An unschooled no-hoper from
the tenements of Edinburgh, Connery has taught generations
of admirers how to present themselves to the world.
His portrayal
of secret agent James Bond invigorated Britain and its
cinema, allowing a cash-strapped, morale-sapped
country in decline
to fancy itself still a player on the world stage. But
while Bond would make Connery the first
actor to command a million
dollar-plus fee, the man himself was forever pouring
scorn on the fantasies audiences found
it increasingly hard to
separate him from.
But what did it do
to a humble Scots lad to become a figure
of universal desire? How did a former
coffin-polisher-cum-milkman handle
being ‘the man every man wants
to be and every woman wants between
her sheets’? How can such worship
not play havoc with one’s soul – especially
a soul as painfully unprepared for
the pressures of stardom as Connery’s? |
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Spirited,
argumentative and sardonically celebratory, Christopher Bray’s
Sean Connery is both a biography of a star and an investigation
of what can happen to a man when the images he creates take over
his life. It’s the story of an actor learning his craft
on the job, of a man pressing his stardom into the service of
his burgeoning political awareness. And it’s an analysis
of what it means to be star-struck – a critical tribute
to a secular icon who has shaped so many dreams.
Datastream
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Pages: 368
Format: Hardback
RRP: £20.00
ISBN: 0571238076
Released: 2nd September 2010 (UK)
Order
Amazon UK (Hardback)
About The Author
Christopher Bray has since written on movies, books, music and
paintings for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times, the TLS,
Literary Review, the New York Times, the New Statesman and
the Word. The author of Michael Caine: A Class Act, a book
the renowned film critic David Thomson described as "Excellent… Bray
has thought hard about this man, and he has a fascinating story
to tell". He lives and works in south-east London.
