Roger Moore: at home in Switzerland

Roger Moore, who passed away this week in Switzerland, had a close relationship with the country. Like his James Bond character, Moore enjoyed skiing, as well as Nordic walking and the gastronomy on offer in the Swiss Alps. (SRF, swissinfo.ch)

But as he told Swiss public television (TSR) in a 2007 interview, it was his children who first pressured him to move here in 1978, after they had learned to ski. “Being a weak father,” he said, and having been “waiting for an excuse to leave England” – he agreed.

The family first moved to Gstaad, where they lived for some years before relocating to Crans-Montana. Moore, who could speak French, was a fan of mountain life, and showed his skiing abilities on screen in the 1985 Bond movie A View to a Kill, also shot on location in Switzerland.

Moore’s only gripe with the country? That despite his appearance in an advertisement for Swiss Federal Railways, he still wasn’t given a half-price discount for traveling on Swiss trains.