London, Aug. 26: Nearly 30 years after they first starred together in London, Dev Anand and Tina Munim will be back in Britain to prepare the ground for the release of the actor’s autobiography, Romancing With Life.

“I have written every word of it myself — in longhand,” the evergreen legend of Bollywood told The Telegraph.

Dev Anand, as they say, doesn’t need any introduction. The 83-year-old actor has seen it all. Over the years, he has given the first break to many an aspiring starlet. One such when he filmed Des Pardes in 1978 in the UK was Tina Munim, whom he was proud to introduce as “my 16-year-old leading lady”.

To this day, critics say Des Pardes, a tale of murder set against the background of illegal immigration into the UK, was one of Tina’s better films.

In one scene shot in Cambridge, Dev Anand also filmed a bunch of Indian students punting on the Cam. “Today Karan Thapar has become a big name in television,” said the man who directed the shot.

Tina went on to make 30 more films before leaving for the US, where she got a degree, and then returned to marry Dhirubhai Ambani’s younger son, Anil.

To her credit, she had not forgotten the huge debt she owes Dev Anand. “Tina is coming with me,” said a delighted Dev Anand.

They will be in London later this week, not so much to launch the book — “it is at the printers” — but meet people who may help give Romancing With Life a fair wind when it is released later this month.

In London, a couple of exclusive dinners have been organised for Dev Anand to meet a handful of key people.

Told that he was bringing out Romancing With Life, a well-known actress commented a little unkindly: “Dev Anand is romancing with Dev Anand — he’s in love with himself.”

Some people confuse his enthusiasm for self-regard but there is no doubt that he does have quite a story to tell. “It’s 460 pages long and it is being published in hardback by Penguin,” he said.

In the West, celebrities are under pressure to reveal intimate details about themselves. — the politician Edwina Currie dropped a bombshell by disclosing she had been sleeping with John Major — or about others.

Publishers, who realise the big money comes from newspaper serialisation, always encourage authors to be an indiscreet as possible. If the authors can be hurtful to others in the bargain, possibly to even their parents, so much the better.

When it comes to sex, celebrities are expected to tell all about their conquests. The one exception to the rule occurred when the Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey published his autobiography and put in so much sex that his publisher had to adopt the unusual stance of urging him to moderate the content.

Even so, Jaffrey supplied chapter and verse on how his adultery led to the collapse of his first marriage to Madhur Jaffrey and also how he had once shared a woman with Pandit Ravi Shankar. He also seduced an American woman during a 60-minute flight from London to Edinburgh — and had time to relax with a cocktail.

“I have tried to be honest, you have to a duty to be honest to yourself and to others,” said Dev Anand, “but you cannot go beyond a certain point”.

Born on September 23, 1923, in undivided Punjab, Dev Anand said he had been witness to the big events that had taken place in India.

"I came to Bombay at the age of 19 with nothing," he pointed out. "I saw Partition."

He also saw Gandhi. When he became a star, he acquired a ring-side seat when the history of India was being shaped and got to know the country's big personalities.

"I met Pandit Nehru, I met Mrs Gandhi, I met Rajiv Gandhi," he recalled. "I lived through the emergency. Abroad, I met Charlie Chaplin. Then, wherever I went, I was a star."

Much has changed with Indians in the UK since Des Pardes ("I don't think a copy of the film exists") was filmed. His two dinners are being hosted by an Indian tycoon, one of many in London.