Directed his wife Dorothea Bennett's novel The Jigsaw Man (1984).
Doubled for terminally ill actor Pedro Armendáriz in some of his long shots in From Russia with Love (1963).
During World War II, he was a paratrooper in the British army, and took part in the battle of Arnhem, Holland, where he was wounded. Young was transferred to a Dutch hospital, where he was nursed back to health. One of the volunteer nurses who took care of him was a 16-year-old Dutch girl named Audrey Heenstra - who became better known as Audrey Hepburn. More than 20 years later, he directed her in Wait Until Dark (1967).
He was in a helicopter which crashed over water whilst filming From Russia with Love (1963). It trapped the director below the surface for a considerable time in an air bubble inside the copter's canopy. He was rescued and then immediately went back behind the camera with his arm in a sling.
In his late years, he directed a six-hour documentary on, and for, Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi in Libya, titled "The Long Journeys" or "The Long Days". The Portuguese given title was "Os Longos Dias" (no release year), but the film has never been screened outside Libya.