Alfred Hickling wades through the Christmas crop of showbiz biographies and finds there's more bite to Christopher Lee's memoir, Lord of Misrule, than to authorised lives of David Niven and Alec Guinness
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Christopher Lee: Lord of Misrule by Christopher Lee -354pp, Orion, £18.99
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Niv: The Authorised Biography of David Niven by Graham Lord - 356pp, Orion, £18.99
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Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography by Piers Paul Read - 640pp, Simon & Schuster £20
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Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without publishers issuing a sackful of showbusiness biographies big enough to give Santa back trouble. The theme for this year seems to be second-ranking members of the British film aristocracy, who overcame their various limitations to carve out a personal niche in cinema history: Lee, Guinness and Niven - the dark lord of Hammer, the earl of Ealing and the crown prince of charm.
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Whether we need more biographical material on any of the above is debatable. David Niven shifted a staggering 9 million copies of his rakish memoir, The Moon's a Balloon, and its follow-up, Bring on the Empty Horses. Lord of Misrule is Christopher Lee's second stab at a memoir (though the first, Tall, Dark and Gruesome, which came out in 1977, strangely doesn't get a mention). And Piers Paul Read's authorised account of Alec Guinness follows hard on the heels of Garry O' Connor's unauthorised one, itself the second biography of the actor that O'Connor has attempted. Both Read and Graham Lord turn out to be diligent biographers, producing accounts which are respectfully thorough if occasionally less than thrilling. But Lee's mordant reminiscence of life as the world's best-known vampire has a little more bite.
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Read more here
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Christopher Lee: Lord of Misrule by Christopher Lee -354pp, Orion, £18.99
«
Niv: The Authorised Biography of David Niven by Graham Lord - 356pp, Orion, £18.99
«
Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography by Piers Paul Read - 640pp, Simon & Schuster £20
«
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without publishers issuing a sackful of showbusiness biographies big enough to give Santa back trouble. The theme for this year seems to be second-ranking members of the British film aristocracy, who overcame their various limitations to carve out a personal niche in cinema history: Lee, Guinness and Niven - the dark lord of Hammer, the earl of Ealing and the crown prince of charm.
«
Whether we need more biographical material on any of the above is debatable. David Niven shifted a staggering 9 million copies of his rakish memoir, The Moon's a Balloon, and its follow-up, Bring on the Empty Horses. Lord of Misrule is Christopher Lee's second stab at a memoir (though the first, Tall, Dark and Gruesome, which came out in 1977, strangely doesn't get a mention). And Piers Paul Read's authorised account of Alec Guinness follows hard on the heels of Garry O' Connor's unauthorised one, itself the second biography of the actor that O'Connor has attempted. Both Read and Graham Lord turn out to be diligent biographers, producing accounts which are respectfully thorough if occasionally less than thrilling. But Lee's mordant reminiscence of life as the world's best-known vampire has a little more bite.
«
Read more here