When The Times begins serialisation on Monday of Sean Connery's eagerly awaited memoirs, they may find his range of knowledge rather more wide-ranging than they had expected.

Not many will know of his enthusiasm for the Gothic tendency in Scottish literature; why so many influential architects have been Scottish; and where Scotland derived its curious blend of what is described in the flyleaf as “psychotic humour”. Many other aspects of Scottish history and culture are also explored in Connery's new book, titled Being a Scot, which he described as being a look back at his life and his attachment to his native country.

One clue may lie in the identity of his co-author Murray Grigor, film-maker and architectural historian, who has done what other would-be biographers have failed to do in the past - persuade Scotland's most famous man to commit himself to print. Twice before, Connery has embarked on an autobiography, and twice before abandoned it, deciding that the whole process was too intrusive.

Grigor, a friend of many years, suggested to Connery that a book which focused on his life and experiences as a passionate Scot would be a worthwhile project. In the course of long sessions, both at the actor's home in the Bahamas and in Scotland, they began a series of talks during which Connery reached back to his childhood, and Grigor involved him in aspects of his country's past which he was eager to explore.

“Most of it comes from just chatting to him and then putting it all together,” Grigor said. “He [Connery] always had a keen interest in Scottish history, and he's met all these extraordinary people, and wanted to find out more as we went along.

“Yes, they are my obsessions as well, but he really has an interest in pursuing a wide variety of subjects. For instance, he met [the German film-producer] Joachim von Mengershausen in Edinburgh, who did talk to him about the Gothic tradition. He once pointed up to the castle, which was floodlit, and said: ‘Your city was surely built by the set designers of Hammer Films!'.”

When it came to recalling his childhood in a Fountainbridge tenement, which Connery describes as “a grim no-man's land,” but where he seems to have had a happy and fulfilling time, the stories are entirely his own. “He's a great story-teller,” said Grigor, “and once he's embarked on telling them, he's fantastic.” On some subjects his knowledge far outweighed that of his co-author. “The thing I know nothing about is sport, and that's probably the best chapter,” he confessed.

The more that Grigor outlined the possible themes of the book, the more Connery was drawn to them, except when the discussions became too prolonged and he would walk out to the golf couse that he has created beside his home in the Bahamas.

Grigor first met Connery in the 1970s when, as a spectator at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Connery found himself dragged into a production. This linked him, improbably, with the writer Auberon Waugh and the journalist Tina Brown, who were taking part in a play by the Polish director Tadeusz Kantor under the supervision of the impresario Richard de Marco. Years later, Grigor persuaded him to make a documentary, entitled Sean Connery's Edinburgh. The two got on so well that when Grigor proposed a joint book project, Connery agreed.

The result is a journey from that Edinburgh tenement through a series of jobs, which included his famous milk-round, a brief period in the Navy, body-building, bit parts, a memorable Macbeth in Toronto, and the breakthrough into the James Bond part that, for most movie-goers, remains definitive.

In the course of the book we find out how Connery faced a crucial career move that could have led to him signing up as a trainee footballer for Manchester United, learn how he perfected the most famous accent in movies, and hear the story of how he was turned down for a knighthood and threw his weight behind the Scottish National Party.

In all of this, Grigor was Boswell to Connery's Johnson. The result may be a joint effort, but the voice is unmistakeably Connery's. So is it biography, autobiography, history or memoir?

“It is as the book that he would like to have read when he left school,” says Grigor. “It's a bit like a jaffa cake - neither cookie, nor biscuit but it still tastes good.”

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