Karl's Reading List

Published by Simon and Schuster Ltd: London, 2022. The same day I put Roger Moore's autobiography, My Word is My Bond , into the Book-Swap Library outside my parents' house, this book was in it. Thinking it was another similar style biography - and having enjoyed the earlier one for what it was, with some reservations - I decided to give this one a go as well. I was not prepared. Although Pocketful of Happiness is indeed another memoir, written by a respected England-based actor, who had a role in Spice World (the main point of overlap between the two actors I noticed), it is mostly focussed on the year in Grant's life when his beloved wife, dialect coach Joan Washington, was dying of lung cancer. And it is heart-breaking. Grant adores his wife, and they had 35 years of marriage together - a rarity in Hollywood circles. The love he has for her, and for their daughter Olivia (called "Oilly" by both parents, in a reference to Olive Oyl from Popeye), permeates this ...

Published by Michael O'Mara Books Limited: London, 2009 (2008). You find the randomest books when you have a book-swap library outside your house! I probably wouldn't have picked this book up from a library or a cafe, but finding it downstairs on the pile of books mum 'curates' from her book-swap library was easy enough to become appealing (yes, we are still living at my parents' house while we house-hunt). Roger Moore was most famous for playing James Bond in seven films - still the most that any actor has played in the official series (Sean Connery played Bond in seven films as well, but the last one was the unofficial Never Say Never Again ). He tells his life story, starting with growing up in England, being one of the children sent away during the Second World War for safety, and moving gradually into his life as an actor. Usually the biographies I read are of Christians; I am a Christian and enjoy reading the stories of how people came to faith, and what they ...