Sir Gielgud: A Life in Letters

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Summertime or Anytime Read
Review: I think letters make the best autobiographies. By definition, letters by the subject are first-hand. They are convenient, because they are also by nature episodic, which means you can put them down and pick them up when the mood strikes. And John Gielgud's letters certainly prove wrong those who say he never wrote an autobiogrsphy. (As the Washington Post reviewer says here, he must have written two letters to different people every day of his life.)

So, here's not just a life ideally presented, but a life worth knowing about, since Gielgud was one of the three or four greatest English-speaking actors of the twentieth century.

Also, we have the experience of Gielgud's films, which flesh out for us this man of letters (literally and figuratively, since Gielgud was the first actor to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford.) As was also pointed out in the Post review, Gielgud was not just a great actor but a gifted writer, so we have the treat of beautiful prose, rendered in the service of a rich history: this man knew and had opinions about almost everything and everyone that mattered in the performing arts, especially the stage and screen.

Through thess letters, we also end up knowing something about the luminaries of the world Gielgud inhabited and moved about in with complete ease. Gielgud writes conversationally, candidly and competently to and about people we only dream of knowing - Shaw, Coward, Gish, Lunt and Fontaine, Olivier and Leigh, Selznick, Richardson, Guinness, Stravinsky, Brando.... Amazing! And in such a natural, unassuming way that there's not even a hint of name dropping or self-promotion, which is so tiresome in today's celebrity interviews and memoirs.

Here is a great actor, director, producer and impresario, who takes his work seriously and has a glorious time doing it, who loves and is loved and who lives into his 90s. If only everyone could be so lucky. On second thought, it wasn't just luck...

One quibble: The picture selection is very poor. If one didn't know better, they might think that Gielgud was born middle-aged. But this is Gielgud's book, and kudos to John Mangan, whose enormous work of collecting, collating and editing has made it so.