A Rogues' Gallery: Off the Record Encounters with Figures of Fame, Folly and Fun 1950-2000

by Peter Lewis

A Rogues' Gallery is a journey through the past half-century, charting the ups and downs of leading writers and actors, thinkers, entertainers, gurus, politicians and public non-conformists. It collects the snapshots gathered during one journalist's long and varied career of the famous and infamous, foolish and funny, when they were off-camera. Here are private views of the tensions that opened cracks in the marriages of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, Harold Pinter and Vivien Merchant, Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright. What really happened when Laurie Lee drank cider with Rosie? Which film roles made Alec Guinness most satisfied and dissatisfied? Which made a young Judi Dench cry? How the woman Hitler most admired publicly embarrassed him; how the spoons once embarrassed Uri Geller; how theatre critics sometimes get hit; how Jon Snow got out of jail; how comedians from Frankie Howerd to Jacques Tati, P. G. Wodehouse to John Betjeman, are beset with anxiety. These are the sort of discoveries made during an eventful life spent observing human quirks and frailties. They make A Rogues' Gallery a different sort of memoir.

298 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013