Gielgud's Letters: John Gielgud in His Own Words - Hardcover

Gielgud, John

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9780297829898: Gielgud's Letters: John Gielgud in His Own Words

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297829890 ISBN 13: 9780297829898

Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004

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John Gielgud wrote letters almost every day of his adult life. Whether at home in London and later in Buckinghamshire, or acting abroad or on location, he delighted in sitting down each morning and recounting what had been going on and what he felt about events around him. He was still writing just a few days before his death aged 96 in May 2000. His letters are treasured by the recipients and the problem for the editor has been in selection. He wrote in an increasingly idiosyncratic hand and remarked that even he needed a magnifying glass at times to see what he had actually written.

Through the letters, which begin with those to his mother, we meet a man who delights in gossip, in describing what he sees and experiences. Here for the first time - and not previously available to biographers - are Gielgud's love letters. They show that he was not shy is expressing the intimacies of personal relationships. Gielgud had a reputation for speaking his mind, and this is evident as he writes about his contemporaries, including the great actors of period: Olivier, Richardson, Redgrave, Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans and the like.

Here is great letter-writing before the age of e-mail.

GIELGUD'S LETTERS are a revelation - full of inside information and gossip.

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Review:

... beautifully edited by Mangan... he has served Gielgud well. (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

... revelatory... The value of these fascinating letters, assembled by Richard Mangan in a real feat of detective work, does not however, depend on their confimation of Gielgud's life-long romance with the stage... the significance of these intelligent jottings relates to their barrier-breaking clarities. A chronically inhibited man bursts from the closets of discretion and introversion. (Nicholas de Jongh EVENING STANDARD)

Writing seems to have come easily to John Gielgud... they are fluent, neatly phrased, urbane... This book contains a great deal which is bound to intrigue anyone interested in the theatre and theatrical history (John Gross SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Gielgud's Letters is more revealing than any of the biographies published during and after his lifetime. It provides a rounded portrait of a man whose every day was taken up with the business of acting or directing... Mangan has put together an invaluable record of the progress of a peerless interpreter of Shakespeare an of an essentially kind and modest human being. (Paul Bailey SUNDAY TIMES)

Revelatory... fascinating... shrewd, funny, vivid... (SCOTSMAN)

Gielgud's Letters is a much more revealing portrait than any of the orthodox biographies. (Roger Lewis SUNDAY EXPRESS)

This invaluable collection reveals more about the actor than any biography has done so far. (SUNDAY TIMES 'You really must read...')

In a society which does not revere age and experience, these letters make a compelling case for gerontocracy. (THE ECONOMIST)

[Gielgud's Letters] does testify to a sweet and generous nature... The man's goodness offers a clue to his greatness. Actors ought to be more than exhibitionists. At its finest, theirs is an altruistic art, which enables them to empathise with the desires and distresses of others. (THE OBSERVER)

... to read them through is to get the full measure of the man. From the earliest age Gielgud had an instinctive elegance, buoyancy and sense of shape in his own use of language. To the very end, there is scarcely a paragraph that is not perfectly phrased and gracefully turned... These letters, an irresistible 60-year-long gossip about life and art, give us as never before the generosity, the vivacity and the instinctive genius of the man. (Simon Callow THE GUARDIAN)

Book Description:

A remarkable 20th century life seen through the frank and enthralling letters of one of the great English actors of his generation - the autobiography that Gielgud himself never wrote.

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