Synopsis
The private journals of the celebrated English actor, covering the period from 1995 to 1996.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-12-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 224 pages | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.0 in | | Thickness: | 0.2 in | | Weight: | 6.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
This eighteen-month diary, from January 1995 to June 1996, from one of the most distinguished--and beloved--actors of stage and screen, reveals the octogenarian spryness of a civilized mind and a beguiling mixture of the meditative and the hedonistic. Sir Alec Guinness's interests and preoccupations recur: theater and film, of course, but also books and paintings; the church, sometimes held up for amused observation; food and drink, from fish'n'chips gatherings with fellow actors in Cambridge to solitary repasts at the Connaught; and the delights of being at home with his wife in the English countryside. Although the entries are written with a keen eye on contemporary events and culture, they also open to a past replete with fascinating memories and anecdotes from his long career. Inevitably, there is a strand of poignancy as friends die and memorial services are attended, but the pleasures and fun to be had with close friends such as Alan Bennett, Irene Worth, and Lauren Bacall form a strong backbone to this marvelously entertaining diary, which offers a glimpse of the private side of Guinness's often very public life.
Industry Reviews
"[Guinness's] diary may not make for gripping material, but it does seem to suggest an ideal way to spend one's retirement."
Berrett
"We may be looking into his glass rather too darkly, but there's a spare elegance and regret here which is captivating, even during the travelogue. His passions, whether religious or other, bubble just under the surface of the text, and my guess is that somewhere, just as in so many of the films he made about escape, deception and false lives, there is another Alec Guinness diary locked in a cupboard and...never intended for publication. Sometimes you think he couldn't even bear to read it himself. But read this: it will, often inadvertently, tell you something about one of the greatest and most and mystical theatrical talents of the century."
Morley
"The mix of wit, sentiment and quotidian detail makes for an engaging, if not very substantial, read."
Long
"Unjustly famous, or notorious, as a bland, faceless man who slipped chameleon-like into the parts he played on stage and in films, he reveals himself here--as he did more than a decade ago in his memoir, 'Blessings in Disguise'--as a pleasure-loving if moderate man and as an accomplished, at times devilish, wit."
Yardley
"Sir Alec is an accomplished writer, both in extended passages and in finely etched, memory-hugging one-liners."
Simon
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