Download or read book Alec Guinness the Unknown written by Garry O'Connor and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive, highly revealing biography of a great actor whose career spanned the twentieth century. Alec Guinness appeared in 77 films and 55 plays, winning acclaim for commanding roles such as Professor Marcus in The Lady Killers, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and George Smiley in Smiley`s People. He was an astonishingly gifted actor who became a British institution, a familiar figure to many. And yet Alec Guinness was a many-layered, complex man who was careful throughout his life to show only a little of his real self, never too much. He died with a large part of the truth still hidden. Now, for the first time, Garry O`Connor is able to reveal the full story, including startling new information on Guinness`s childhood, his secret relationships and the fears that haunted him. Backed by impeccable research, including interviews with Guinness himself as well as those close to him, this riveting biography will at last fill in the gaps, adding a new depth to our understanding not just of Guinness`s life but of his remarkable acting ability. Garry O`Connor has directed at the Royal Shakespeare Company, been a critic for The Times and written authoritative biographies of Paul Scofield, Peggy Ashcroft, Ralph Richardson and Sean O`Casey.
Download or read book Blessings in Disguise written by Alec Guinness and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alec Guinness shares his memoirs and describes the people who have shaped his life.
Download or read book Alec Guinness written by Piers Paul Read and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-06-21 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait based on access to the late actor's personal writings offers insight into his experiences as a soldier in World War II, his stage and film achievements, and his fiercely private personal life.
Download or read book Alec Guinness written by Garry O'Connor and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alec Guinness appeared in seventy-seven films and fifty-five plays in an outstanding career that spanned the century. He won acclaim for stage, film and television performances, and yet he was a complex man who was careful throughout his life to show only a little of his real self. He died with a large part of the truth still hidden. Garry O'Connor here reveals the full story. The result is a multi-layered portrait of a man shaped by his illegitimacy and his strained relationship with his mother, seeking for certainties in his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Backed by impeccable research, including interviews with Guinness himself, this riveting biography will add a new depth to our understanding not just of Guinness's life but of his remarkable acting ability.
Download or read book My Name Escapes Me written by Alec Guinness and published by Penguin Mass Market. This book was released on 1998 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A marvelously entertaining diary from one of the most distinguished--and beloved--actors of stage and screen. Revealing the octogenarian spryness of a civilized mind and a beguiling mixture of the meditative and the hedonistic, My Name Escapes Me offers a glimpse of the private side of Guinness's often very public life.
Download or read book The Uncomfortable Dead written by Subcomandante Marcos and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stylized reissue of the acclaimed, surreal noir collaboration between Mexico’s greatest writer and its most courageous revolutionary. “Taibo’s expertise ensures a smart, funny book, and Marcos brings a wry sense of humor.” —Publishers Weekly In alternating chapters, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos and the consistently excellent Paco Ignacio Taibo II create an uproarious murder mystery with two intersecting storylines. The chapters written by the famously masked Marcos originate in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico. There, the fictional “Subcomandante Marcos” assigns Elias Contreras—an odd but charming mountain man—to travel to Mexico City in search of an elusive and hideous murderer named “Morales.” The second story line, penned by Taibo, stars his famous series detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne. Hector guzzles Coca-Cola and smokes cigarettes furiously amidst his philosophical and always charming approach to investigating crimes—in this case, the search for his own “Morales.” The two stories collide absurdly and dramatically in the urban sprawl of Mexico City. The ugly history of the city’s political violence rears its head, and both detectives find themselves in an unpredictable dance of death with forces at once criminal, historical, and political. Readers expecting political heavy-handedness will be disarmed by the humility and playful self-mocking that runs throughout the book.
Download or read book Monsignor Quixote written by Graham Greene and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-10-02 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driven away from his parish by a censorious bishop, Monsignor Quixote sets off across Spain accompanied by a deposed renegade mayor as his own Sancho Panza, and his noble steed Rocinante – a faithful but antiquated SEAT 600. Like Cervantes’s classic, this comic, picaresque fable offers enduring insights into our life and times.
Download or read book John Gielgud written by Sheridan Morley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir John Gielgud's career as an actor was perhaps the most distinguished of any of his generation, and, in a lifetime that spanned almost a century, he appeared in hundreds of theatrical productions and films, receiving virtually every honor given, including an Academy Award. Now, in this wonderfully insightful biography, fully authorized and written with first-ever access to Gielgud's personal letters and diaries, bestselling biographer Sheridan Morley not only traces the actor's fascinating career, but provides a fresh and remarkably frank look into John Gielgud the man, showing how his success as an actor in many ways came at the expense of his personal happiness. Born into a theatrical family, John Gielgud took to the stage as naturally as a duck to water, and almost from the beginning, those who saw him perform knew that they were experiencing something extraordinary. A determined actor, intent on learning and polishing his craft, he worked incessantly, taking on one role after another, the greater the challenge, the better. During his long and remarkable career, he took on every truly great and demanding role, including all of Shakespeare's major plays as well as many contemporary and experimental productions. At ease in both great drama and light comedy, he was blessed with a great range and a seemingly infinite capacity to inhabit whatever character he attempted. Basically a somewhat shy man offstage, however, Gielgud for the most part limited his friendships to those with whom he worked, and as a result the theater -- and later, film -- made up just about his entire life. That he was flesh and blood, however, was reflected in the fact that he did enter into two long-term relationships, the first with a man who eventually left him for another, but with whom Gielgud maintained a strong tie, and the second with a handsome, mysterious Hungarian who lived with him until he died, just a few months before Sir John. True scandal came into Gielgud's life only once. In 1953, just weeks after Gielgud had been knighted by the Queen, he was arrested in a public men's room and charged with solicitation. The British press had a field day, but Gielgud's friends and fellow actors rallied to his support, as did his thousands of fans, and the result was the eventual change of law in England regarding sex between consenting adults. While these and many other aspects of his personal life are discussed for the first time in this distinguished biography, it is Gielgud's career as an actor, of course, that receives the greatest attention. And while British audiences had the pleasure of seeing him perform in the theater for his entire life, Americans came to know him best for his work in the movies, and most especially for his Oscar-winning performance as Hobson the butler in the Dudley Moore film Arthur. As dramatic and captivating as one of Sir John's many performances, this authorized biography is an intimate and fully rounded portrait of an unforgettable actor and a remarkable man.
Download or read book A Most Wanted Man written by John le Carre and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A half-starved young Russian is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he?
Download or read book Sabbath s Theater written by Philip Roth and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He is relentlessly defiant. He is exceedingly libidinous. His appetite for the outrageous is insatiable. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging powerhouse whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's astonishing new novel. Sabbath's Theater tells Mickey's story in the wake of the death of his mistress, an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey is now in his mid-sixties and besieged by ghosts - of his mother, his beloved brother, his vanished first wife, his mistress of thirteen years. Bereft and grieving, he embarks on a turbulent journey back into his past, one that brings him to the brink of madness and extinction. But no matter how ardently he courts death, he is too exuberantly alive to succeed at dying. Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. This book, which presents Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, is sur
Download or read book The Women of Rothschild written by Natalie Livingstone and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Women of Rothschild, Natalie Livingstone reveals the role of women in shaping the legacy of the famous Rothschild dynasty, synonymous with wealth and power. From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first. As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the family bank, they forged their own distinct dynasty of daughters and nieces, mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform, and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and idealists, performers and introverts, they mixed with everyone from Queen Victoria to Chaim Weizmann, Rossini to Isaiah Berlin, and the Duke of Wellington to Alec Guinness, as well as with amphetamine-dealers, suffragists and avant-garde artists. Rothschild women helped bring down ghetto walls in early nineteenth-century Frankfurt, inspired some of the most remarkable cultural movements of the Victorian period, and in the mid-twentieth century burst into America, where they patronized Thelonious Monk and drag-raced through Manhattan with Miles Davis. Absorbing and compulsive, The Women of Rothschild gives voice to the complicated, privileged, and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history.
Download or read book The Honourable Schoolboy written by John le Carré and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second part of John le Carré's Karla Trilogy, the battle of wits between spymaster George Smiley and his Russian adversary takes on an even more dangerous dimension. As the fall of Saigon looms, master spy George Smiley must outmaneuver his Soviet counterpart on a battlefield that neither can afford to lose. The mole has been eliminated, but the damage wrought has brought the British Secret Service to its knees. Given the charge of the gravely compromised Circus, George Smiley embarks on a campaign to uncover what Moscow Centre most wants to hide. When the trail goes cold at a Hong Kong gold seam, Smiley dispatches Gerald Westerby to shake the money tree. A part-time operative with cover as a philandering journalist, Westerby insinuates himself into a war-torn world where allegiances—and lives—are bought and sold. Brilliantly plotted and morally complex, The Honourable Schoolboy is the second installment of John le Carré's renowned Karla triology and a riveting portrayal of postcolonial espionage. With an introduction by the author.
Download or read book A Murder of Quality written by John le Carré and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A murder mystery in the finest tradition of English detective novels, John le Carré's A Murder of Quality is an ingenious puzzle featuring his best-loved character George Smiley. Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doilies and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. Smiley knows that Stella feared her husband would murder her, but as he probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second George Smiley novel, le Carré moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with Smiley as master detective. If you enjoyed A Murder of Quality, you might like le Carré's Call for the Dead, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Beautifully intelligent, satiric and witty' Daily Telegraph
Download or read book A Handful of Dust written by Evelyn Waugh and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Funeral in Berlin written by Len Deighton and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 1978 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ferociously cool Cold War thriller from the author of The Ipcress File. Len Deighton's third novel has become a classic, as compelling and suspenseful now as when it first exploded on to the bestseller lists. In Berlin, where neither side of the wall is safe, Colonel Stok of Red Army Security is prepared to sell an important Russian scientist to the West - for a price. British intelligence are willing to pay, providing their own top secret agent is in Berlin to act as go-between. But it soon becomes apparent that behind the facade of an elaborate mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics. A game in which the blood-stained legacy of Nazi Germany is enmeshed in the intricate moves of cold war espionage...
Download or read book I Am C 3PO the Inside Story written by and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the incredible untold story of one of Star Wars' most iconic characters, C-3PO, told by the man who knows him best. "Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor! We'll be destroyed for sure. This is madness." These words were the very first to be spoken in any Star Wars movie, and they were spoken by a droid- C-3PO. With his gleaming golden body and good-intentioned (yet worrisome) personality, C-3PO was there at the very beginning. Of course, C-3PO wasn't actually a robot, or some amazing early animatronic creation - he was actually a man named Anthony Daniels. Now, for the very first time, Anthony Daniels will tell C-3PO's story in its entirety, from seeing the first concept images to the early stages of the final film in the Skywalker saga, Star Wars- Episode IX, and in the process, will also tell his own. This includes his encounters with movie legends such as Sir Alec Guinness, what it was like working closely with George Lucas, and the friendships he formed with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and others. But being encased in a solid shell for countless hours also involved hardships, pain, and in some cases real physical danger. In I am C-3PO- The Inside Story, Daniels candidly relays his humorous, unvarnished, and extraordinary story as the man inside the machine, providing fresh new insights for even the most die-hard of Star Wars fans.
Download or read book Jimmy Stewart written by Michael Munn and published by Robson. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this definitive biography of one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars, Michael Munn reveals the truth behind the diffident, earnest and kindly persona of Jimmy Stewart. Drawn from the author’s formal interviews and informal meetings with the star and his friendship with Stewart’s wife, Gloria, is this portrait of a man who came from the Presbyterian traditions of Pennsylvania to become one of the silver screen’s enduring legends. An openly right-wing Conservative and super-patriot, Stewart worked for the FBI at the behest of J Edgar Hoover, directing his undercover sleuthing to crack organised crime in Hollywood. But he was unscrupulously manipulated by the president into flushing out Communists from the film industry. Among these revelations, there are also tales of heady love affairs, hookers and hoodlums, and of Stewart’s run-in with the most dangerous of all gangsters, Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Sigal. Accusations of racism are explored, as is Stewart’s notoriously volatile temper. There is a comprehensive account of his experiences as a colonel in the US Air Force in World War Two - and, of course, there are the films: 'It’s a Wonderful Life', 'The Greatest Show on Earth', 'Rear Window', the westerns and his Academy Awards.
