Christopher Hovelle Wood (born 5 November 1935 in London’s Lambeth borough is 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
Wood was the first author to write novelizations of Bond films. His novelization of The Spy Who Loved Me, renamed James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me to avoid confusion with Ian Fleming’s original novel, has nothing in common with the Fleming book. Similarly, the plot of Moonraker, renamed James Bond and Moonraker, is almost entirely written by Wood, although it does share some similarities with Fleming’s original novel, in particular the villain Hugo Drax. Bond fans generally rate Wood’s novelizations highly. Kingsley Amis wrote in The New Statesman that, despite several reservations, “Mr Wood has bravely tackled his formidable task, that of turning a typical late Bond film, which must be basically facetious, into a novel after Ian Fleming, which must be basically serious. … the descriptions are adequate and the action writing excellent.”
1 James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
2 James Bond and Moonraker (1979)