Being a Scot

'My first big break came when I was five years old. It's taken me more than seventy years to realise that. You see, at five I first learnt to read. It's that simple and it's that profound. I left school at thirteen. I didn't have a formal education... It has been a long return journey from my two-room Fountainbridge home in the smoky industrial end of Edinburgh opposite the McCowans' toffee factory. There was no bathroom with a communal toilet outside. For years we had only gas lighting. Sometimes the light in the shared stairway would be out after some desperado had broken the mantle to bubble gas through milk for kicks.' Although he is an indubitably international superstar, Sir Sean Connery still knows the city of Edinburgh practically street by street from delivering the morning milk as a schoolboy. His round included Fettes College, where Ian Fleming had sent his fictional James Bond after he was expelled from Eton. BEING A SCOT is a vivid and highly personal portrait of Scotland.