For biography lovers and cinema lovers, can I recommend the series of books that constitute the autobiography of Dirk Bogarde:
A Postillion Struck by Lightning, 1977 Snakes and Ladders, 1978 An Orderly Man, 1983 Backcloth, 1986 A Particular Friendship, 1989 Great Meadow: An Evocation, 1992 A Short Walk from Harrods, 1993 Cleared for Take-Off, 1995
I must still have them all but I can't find anything around here anymore, so I had to look them up on Wiki. For those who don't know who Dirk Bogarde was, which would probably be anybody under 40, he was inititially probably the biggest film star, "matinee idol", England ever saw in the 1950s. However moving into the 1960s he tired of the rubbish the Rank studios wanted him to keep doing and looked to team up with the New Wave directors who wanted to make films with substance and meaning. Among the first of these were such as "The Servant" and "Darling" which immediately catapulted him into major status in arthouse cinema. There followed about 3 decades of making films with the best directors then working. Some of those movies will live forever.
But along with his cinema work he was also a fairly prolific writer and the books listed above make up most if not all of his autobiography. Naturally they contain a lot of background to his film career but also reach back to his childhood. He was a very good writer, easy to read, and I highly recommend them to you...if you can find them.
