JOHN Glen holds the record as the man who's directed most James Bond movies, but he still has one regret - his favourite, Licence To Kill, was not as big a box office success as others in the long-running cinema franchise.

The 007 adventure, featuring one of Timothy Dalton's two appearances as the secret agent, was controversial because of its more realistic approach and its violence.

"It didn't reach as many people as the other films, partly because the 15 certificate restricted audiences," says Glen, who's written about his Bond days in his book For My Eyes Only. "Now the film appears on the box and all the scenes cut by the censor are there, which shows up the hypocrisy of censorship."

This was a small glitch in a career in which he began as a studio messenger boy and has seen him working with cinematic greats including Orson Welles and Marlon Brando on films as diverse as The Italian Job and The Third Man, and on TV series such as Danger Man.

He was an editor and second unit director in film and TV before On Her Majesty's Secret Service gave him his break into Bond movies in 1969; this was followed by filming the pre-credit sequence for The Spy Who Loved Me in which Bond is pursued down a snow-covered mountain, skis over the edge and hangs in mid-air before his Union Jack parachute opens.

Glen regards this as "probably the greatest action sequence I ever committed to film" and went on to film the pre-credit scene for Moonraker which was shot entirely in mid-air. Then producer Cubby Broccoli asked him to direct For Your Eyes Only, followed by Octopussy, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill.

The offer to direct came out of the blue. "I'm one of those people who never expects anything. I've had so many disappointments I anticipate nothing in a sense," he says.

One day he was invited to lunch by Broccoli at Pinewood Studios and found himself in the company of other key technical people from the Bond movies. "People were asking, 'who's going to direct the next Bond?' and Cubby was evasive," recalls Glen. "We had a nice lunch and the next day I had another call from him. This time no one was at the lunch apart from his family, because Bond is a family business.

"Then he invited me back to his office. He was sitting behind his desk, the family were all sitting around him and I began to get the feeling something was up. He said, 'how would you feel about directing the next Bond?'. I must have paused because he said, 'do you need time to think about it?'. I didn't because it was really a dream come true."

Glen's book takes an intimate look behind the scenes of the movies whose mix of guns, girls and big action sequences made the spy's adventures an international success. His insider knowledge provides a fascinating insight into how some of the most famous sequences were put together.

Quite often the screenwriters would simply leave a gap in the script marked "chase", letting Glen and his team come up with the details of the actual sequence. "I was usually inspired by the location recce. I seem to have a knack of looking at a place and things spring to mind," he says.

In those days stunts were performed for real without any hi-tech trickery. "Now they're able to do it in the computer which has taken all the fun out of it."

A major dilemma facing him as he prepared to direct his first Bond was an actor to play 007. Roger Moore was in protracted contract negotiations with Broccoli, leaving his future as the shaken not stirred spy in doubt.

"I was never quite sure how serious Cubby was about replacing Roger but they knew how to keep a secret," he says. "So I was looking for a new Bond. They talked about Mel Gibson, which would have been wonderful, and Sam Neill and all kinds of people, but didn't really want to go America.

"I tested quite a few people, not Mel - his agent said he wanted three million and that put Cubby off. That's equal to 20 million or more these days."

Moore stayed around for three more films before Timothy Dalton took over. Both Dalton and Glen were replaced when the Bond films were given a makeover in the Nineties.

"They were right to get rid of me," says the director. "I was only employed from film to film. They'd come to me in post-production and say they wanted me to do the next one, which was very flattering.

"We were great friends and got on very well. I was the outsider because it was a family business with Cubby, his daughter Barbara and her husband Michael Wilson."

Although Licence To Kill is his favourite among those he directed, Glen nominates Goldfinger as the best in the series. "It's difficult to judge my own films but For Your Eyes Only had a certain freshness, the best action and the best humour," he says.

"What I tried to bring to the Bond action was humour. What people like is unexpected humour. For instance, we're used to seeing planes flying over cars, but not cars flying over planes."

The recent Pierce Brosnan Bond films have revived 007's screen appeal although Glen doesn't see them as much different to previous ones. "We always used to bring the stories up to date," he says. "Obviously they find it more difficult to find original action today than we did as most things have been done and you can't copy anyone on the Bonds. You are an innovator."

His work post-Bond has included Christopher Columbus - The Discovery in which he directed Hollywood legend Marlon Brando - "a very nice man". The actor admitted he was only making the film because he needed money to pay legal bills.

"I had a nervous cough which he said was because of the dry air in Madeira where we were filming. The next day I went back to my room and there was a humidifier from him. What a nice thought," he says.

He also cast Catherine Zeta-Jones in the film after seeing her in TV's Darling Buds Of May. "I knew she was going to be a big star," he adds. But he failed to spot the potential of Elizabeth Hurley; he turned her down as a Bond girl when she was 16.

Currently, he's working on several scripts including one to star ex-Bond Roger Moore as an elderly cat burglar trying to return the loot to its rightful owners.

Ask Glen about his favourite Bond moments and he favours some that never made it to the screen. He'd edit together all the humorous gaffe and blunders caught on camera into an end-of-film compilation which he screened for the crew. But that reel was for their eyes only, not the public view.

For My Eyes Only (Batsford, £16.99)