The Canberra Times
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/blogs/colin-steele/roger-moore-loves-villains-and-great-books-about-booze/1345238.aspx
Roger Moore loves villains and great books about booze
Sir Roger Moore has revealed he would have preferred to have played a villain because they had better lines than him in the Bond movies but presumably he wouldn't have been paid as much. Moore was speaking at the recent Cheltenham Literature Festival to launch his autobiography 'My Word is my Bond'. He will be in Sydney and Melbourne in November at literary events. Unfortunately, Canberra again misses out. Once upon a time, the National Press Club used to host celebrity lunches and I can remember successful ones with both Peter Ustinov and Garfield Sobers.Not sure how or why this changed but they used to draw big crowds and would surely go down well on ABC TV.
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Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Gertrude Stein, and Arthur Conan Doyle speak to us again
The British Library recently released CDs contain recordings of 30 British writers and 27 from the US, most of whom are being heard for the first time since they were in front of the microphone. They include the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, "the sole recording of Arthur Conan Doyle, battily explaining the importance of spiritualism and the existence of telepathy, and Gertrude Stein incomprehensibly explaining how she writes.Raymond Chandler wins the prize for "drunkest interviewee," while Vladimir Nabokov sounds like "a ham actor reciting poetry." Nabokov describes the drudgery of writing thusly: "Harrowing irritation when strolling with my tools and viscera, the pencil that needs resharpening, the bladder that has to be drained, the word that I always mis-spell and always have to look up'.
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Posted By: Colin Steele on 28/10/2008 11:34:11 AM