[2] Bond enlisted in the Coldstream Guards of the British Army soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, where his education marked him out for officer training, and he was duly sent to Sandhurst.

Evacuated home and awarded a Military Cross in February 1943,[5][6] he dined with future prime minister Harold Macmillan, who had commanded the same platoon until he was wounded in the Great War.

[3] He was captured in Florence in the summer of 1944, and spent the last few months of the war in Stalag VII-A, a Bavarian POW camp.

[2][7] He enjoyed a varied film, stage and television career, which began in 1938 with experience with the Finchley Amateur Dramatic Society.

Because of his intention to perform in South Africa (the country's apartheid system was the cause of a UN-backed cultural boycott), a motion urging Bond to resign was proposed, but rejected, in July 1984.

He died on 15 October 2006, at St George's Hospital in Tooting, London,[1] and was survived by his third wife Annie, a son, a daughter and a stepson.