Elizabeth Taylor’s Kiss and Other Brushes with Hollywood

What a treat. An all-star cast with one thing in common: they worked with David Wood. And just for us he’s brought them to life again - and so vividly - in this irresistible memoir of his ‘brushes with Hollywood’. Gyles Brandreth

In this memoir, actor and writer David Wood recalls his ‘brushes with Hollywood’, notably being kissed on the lips by Elizabeth Taylor as midnight struck on his 22nd birthday; playing Richard Burton’s servant on stage in Dr Faustus; being seduced by Shelley Winters in The Vamp, a television two-hander play; hanging upside down from a chandelier and being rescued by David Hemmings in the West End musical Jeeves; singing songs and being shot down in flames as a Royal Flying Corps officer in the film Aces High, in which he was reunited with Malcolm McDowell (his fellow rebel schoolboy in the film If….) and acted alongside Christopher Plummer and Simon Ward; sharing the screen at sea in an oil rig supply vessel with Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins and James Mason in North Sea Hijack; penning the daytime Emmy-nominated Back Home, starring Hayley Mills, thereby becoming a Disney-approved writer; and writing The Queen’s Handbag to celebrate the Queen’s 80th birthday, performed in Buckingham Palace Gardens and seen live by 8,000,000 BBC TV viewers.

I couldn’t put it down. It has all the charm and warmth and wit that is David Wood and his lifelong passion for the theatre is inspiring. I loved it. Hayley Mills