Geoffrey Bond

Geoffrey Bond (1920-2009) was born in Eltham, UK, and attended the City of London Freeman’s School, Ashstead, where at the age of 15 he had an article, ‘The History of Tiger Rag’, published in the school magazine. He started work with a band and toured the country, until the Second World War broke out, when he joined the Army, but was invalided out and returned to being a musician with the Sandy Powell Roadshow. As well as playing with the band, he wrote and played in sketches.

In 1947 he went to South Africa where he worked with Alan Dell at the South African Broadcasting Corporation in Durban. He appeared in an Edgar Wallace play, The Ringer. Other acting parts followed, and in 1948 he was asked to take the lead role in a film called The Snake Skin Belt, which was filmed in Rhodesia and showed in UK as a serial at the Saturday morning children’s clubs.

Returning to England in 1949, Geoffrey joined the BBC Drama Repertory Company. He made appearances in radio dramas such as PC49 and Paul Temple. He also wrote radio plays, features and adaptations. His BBC writing credits include a nine month stint on Mrs Dale’s Diary. In 1950 he played the role of a Walsham Bay police sergeant in the Rank/Independent Artists’ film The Dark Man. In another film,The Lady with the Lamp he played an army sergeant.

Then his agent told him the editors of Eagle were looking for ideas for a new strip and he came up with the idea for a French Foreign Legion story and its lead character Sergeant ‘Tough’ Luck. An artist friend produced a dummy of the first episode of ‘Luck of the Legion’. Itfirst appeared in the 'Eagle' on 9th May, 1952 and was a big success, The strip ran for nearly ten years. He also wrote 'The Baden Powell Story' and 'Lincoln of America', which appeared under the pseudonym Alan Jason, and collaborated with Cyril Holloway on ‘For Bravery’. 1954 saw him playing Spada, the evil Vultan leader in the Radio Luxembourg science fiction serial Dan Dare. Geoffrey also wrote five 'Luck of the Legion' novels.

Geoffrey wrote numerous other books on historical characters, including Ned Kelly, Geronimo, Kit Carson and Lawrence of Arabia, and books on the Lancastria and Lakonia disasters (the reason for his appearance here)

In 1965 he and his wife emigrated to Rhodesia where he spent three years as a Provincial Information Officer and did some freelance broadcasting, before joining the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation full-time as a producer and announcer. For a year he wrote and often played in the first Rhodesian soap opera The Jacaranda People. After a brief stint in New Zealand with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, where he had his own programme, Focus,he returned to to a politically troubled Rhodesia. He wrote a number of scripts for the Rhodesian Ministry of Education, which were sent out on tape to schools across the country, and for a while he joined the army as Public Relations Officer. While in Rhodesia he wrote two books relating to Rhodesian military history, and two series of religious educational books for Longmans.

In 1989 he returned to England, following which he created a new comic strips which appeared in Eagle Times for over five years. He them for 3 years and they were then scripted by his son, Jim (Naval fiction author Alaric Bond).