Christopher Wood (writer)

Wood died at his apartment in southwest France on 9 May 2015, and was survived by his son and daughter. However, his death was not widely known until Sir Roger Moore paid tribute to him on Twitter on 17 October.

Wood was also responsible for the Confessions series of novels and their film adaptations, written under the pseudonym Timothy Lea. They are Confessions of a Window Cleaner, Confessions of a Driving Instructor, Confessions from a Holiday Camp, Confessions from a Hotel, Confessions of a Travelling Salesman, Confessions of a Film Extra, Confessions from the Clink, Confessions of a Private Soldier, Confessions from the Pop Scene (adapted into the movie Confessions of a Pop Performer), Confessions from a Health Farm, Confessions from the Shop Floor, Confessions of a Long Distance Lorry Driver, Confessions of a Plumber's Mate, Confessions of a Private Dick, Confessions from a Luxury Liner, Confessions from a Nudist Colony, Confessions of a Milkman, Confessions of an Ice Cream Man and Confessions from a Haunted House. Wood told an interviewer for The Independent in 2013: "The books, and later the films, got terrible reviews, but they were successful, and success was its own currency".

Wood told Penthouse that each Confessions book took approximately five weeks to complete. "They were funny then, and they are funny now", Wood asserted in 2013. "Then again, I always did like smut."

Wood's novel California, Here I Am (2004) is another semi-autobiographical work, this time set in the American film industry. William Boyd said the novel is "A very funny, shrewd and horribly accurate novel about the movie business, Hollywood-style, written with sustained brio and mordant intelligence."

Wood's African experiences inspired two novels: his first, Make it Happen to Me and his adventure novel A Dove Against Death (1983). Of A Dove Against Death, he recalled, "I was helping to conduct a plebiscite in the Southern Cameroons under UN supervision in 1960. An old man came out of a hut wearing what at first glance I thought was a brass coal scuttle. Then I realized that it was German helmet with a spike on it. My interest began then. Many years later came the story." After considerable research, Wood discovered records of a Dove that was sent to south-west Africa and a wireless station in Togoland that the Germans built and the British destroyed, all of which he wove together to create the novel.

In 1979 LWT screened his 13-part situation comedy Lovely Couple, produced and directed by Derrick Goodwin. He also wrote the action film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) starring Fred Ward, which was directed by former Bond director Guy Hamilton. In the late 1990s Wood wrote scripts for producer Roger Corman.

Wood also created a female counterpart, Rosie Dixon, and these were likewise written in the first person perspective and published pseudonymously under the name "Rosie Dixon". Although nine Rosie Dixon novels were published, only the first—Confessions of a Night Nurse—was made into a film, Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse (1978). The other titles were Confessions of a Gym Mistress, Confessions from an Escort Agency, Confessions of a Lady Courier, Confessions from a Package Tour, Confessions of a Physical WRAC, Confessions of a Baby Sitter, Confessions of a Personal Secretary, and Rosie Dixon, Barmaid.

Wood graduated from Peterhouse at Cambridge University in 1960 with degrees in economics and law. He did his mandatory military service in Cyprus, which inspired his second novel Terrible Hard, Says Alice. Novelist and fellow future Bond writer William Boyd praised the book, citing it as one of the few convincing examples of accounts of war alongside Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

Wood's parents sent their son to board at Edward VI Grammar School in Norwich to protect him from The Blitz. The Baedeker Blitz of April 1942 saw the adjacent medieval school bombed into rubble. Wood continued his education at King's College Junior School in London where he found himself at risk from "drunken, mentally disturbed, sexual predators" among the staff.

Christopher Hovelle Wood (5 November 1935 – 9 May 2015) was an English screenwriter and novelist, best known for the Confessions series of novels and films which he wrote as Timothy Lea. Under his own name, he adapted two James Bond novels for the screen: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, with Richard Maibaum) and Moonraker (1979).

Christopher Wood was the son of Walter Leonard Wood and Audrey Maud (Hovell) Wood (born 1906). They were married in 1935. He was born in London borough of Lambeth. Wood had three children, one of whom is film producer and literary agent Caroline Wood.