From Micheline with love

SIR Sean Connery called on his wife Micheline to help him prepare for a world film premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last night.

With his arm in a sling the 007 star had to have his jacket eased on before the screening of Stone Of Destiny.

It has been reported that Connery hurt his arm when he fell playing golf in the US just before travelling to Edinburgh. He then joined actress Tilda Swinton ahead of the film at Cineworld in Edinburgh.

Stone Of Destiny covers the true story of four Glaswegian students who briefly returned the stone to Scotland in the 1950s. The film is based on a book written by Ian Hamilton, one of the students who kidnapped the stone and who later became an SNP activist.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival, the longest continually-running in the world, features 142 films from 29 countries this year. It is also hosting 15 world premieres, including Dylan Thomas epoch The Edge Of Love, starring Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller.

On Friday tickets for a talk being given by Connery at the launch of his memoirs at the Edinburgh International Book Festival were snapped up in under an hour.

Stars turn out for date with Destiny

THE great and the good of the Scottish film industry, including Edinburgh Film Festival patrons Sir Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton, turned out for the premiere of Stone Of Destiny at Cineworld in Edinburgh last night.

Stone of Destiny, directed by Charles Martin Smith, tells the true story of four Scottish nationalist students who decided to repatriate the Stone nearly 60 years ago. It stars Robert Carlyle, Billy Boyd, Charlie Cox and Kate Mara.

The film is based on the memoirs of one of the four students, Ian Hamilton, played by Cox. Hamilton, who was a QC and SNP activist in later life, said: "People always ask if I would do it again, and the answer is: 'Of course I would.'

"To do something in your twenties which provides material for a film in your eighties must indicate some sort of achievement."

Stone Of Destiny tells how, on Christmas Day 1950, four Glaswegian students stole the Stone of Scone from the Abbey and took it north again. Four months later it was left on the altar of Arbroath Abbey, draped in a Saltire flag.

The Stone, which had been broken into two pieces during the theft, was then repaired and taken back to Westminster.