A Short Walk from Harrods

Author: Dirk Bogarde
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1448208319
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
_______________ 'The autobiography comes full circle - appropriately enough, because this is a book in which people come to terms with the past, make peace with inner demons, learn to say goodbye to loved ones and become sensitive, caring human beings' - The Independent _______________ First published in 1993, A Short Walk from Harrods is volume six of Dirk Bogarde's best-selling memoirs. Forced to return to London because of his manager and his partner's rapidly deteriorating health, Bogarde learned to re-adapt to life in the west London neighbourhoods that groomed him as an aspiring young actor. With his fame fading and his descent into old age, the entire process had become rather difficult to endure. He writes of stalking the streets like an 'apologetic turtle' and avoiding society, announcing that he would, from then on, only do 'matinees' because he is too tired to go out in the evenings. Although this memoir finds Bogarde at his most vulnerable, he retains the lucidity and charm that makes his writing so enjoyable. As ever, he expresses a deep sentimentality that ensures no detail goes unnoticed or unfelt.

An Orderly Man

Author: Dirk Bogarde
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 144820819X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
________________ 'Absorbing... his gift for dialogue is exceptional' - The Observer ________________ First published in 1983, An Orderly Man is volume three of Dirk Bogarde's best-selling memoirs. After completing work on Visconti's Death in Venice, the celebrated actor seeks a refuge from 20 years of 'continual motion'. This dream of a peaceful retreat materialises itself in the form of a neglected farmhouse in the South of France. However, before he is rewarded with the calm he craves, he is forced to endure the relative evils of dying olive trees and the rampaging mistral. In this pursuit of the tranquil, Bogarde manages to portray the simplest of issues in the most delicate and humane way. This volume also covers the years in which Dirk Bogarde gave some of his finest acting performances and began his career as a gifted writer, imposing order on a rich and varied life.

Ever, Dirk

Author: Dirk Bogarde
Publisher: Phoenix House
ISBN: 9780753825891
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999) was known principally as the star of more than sixty films and a critically acclaimed author. To a privileged few, however, he was a prolific, stimulating and treasured correspondent." "This selection of his letters opens as he and his companion Anthony Forwood start a new life on the Continent, from where Bogarde writes extensively to - among others - the director Joseph Losey, the critic Dilys Powell, the publisher Norah Smallwood, and the authors Penelope Mortimer and Kathleen Tynan. In more than one case, we have an insight into 'a kind of love affair without the carnality' - the description he gave to his epistolary relationship with the American 'Mrs X', which was the basis of his eighth bestseller, A Particular Friendship (1989)." "Collected here, his letters represent an alternative autobiography, covering three decades. On display are the qualities familiar to those who knew the private Bogarde: acute observation, a laser-like intelligence, an easily-provoked waspishness, an aversion to the politically correct, a directness which could wound and offend, a robust compassion for the needy, a relish for the striking metaphor, and a catastrophic disdain for correct spelling and punctuation. As clouds gather over the Provencal idyll, forcing a return to London, his confidences grow more and more poignant. But the incisive humour survives."--BOOK JACKET.

A Gentle Occupation

Author: Dirk Bogarde
Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader
ISBN: 1448206847
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
First published in 1980, this tells of how in the the uneasy aftermath of war, a group of ordinary, civilised people on an island off Java face the legacy of hatred and corruption left by the Japanese occupation. With sudden and violent death ever present, they seize their moments of happiness and try above all else to stay alive until the opportunity for release arrives. Selfishness, sex, greed, fear, revenge, all play their part; so too do the finer instincts of love, loyalty and concern, for people have a way of both hurting and caring for one another. Men and women, soldiers and civilians, Europeans and Asians - Dirk Bogarde brings each of them alive through his marvellously witty dialogue and penetrating sense of character. At times gloriously funny, never sitting in judgement, he portrays their fallible, complex humanity as the thin skin of conventional behaviour, tautened in the corrosive atmosphere of the East Indies, gradually begins to split. As compelling as it is enjoyable to read, Dirk Bogarde's novel is both a delightful comedy of manners and an incisive study of people under pressure. From beginning to end it is original, and unmistakably true to life. A Gentle Occupation is a story about survival, and the price that has to be paid for it.

Murder Being Once Done

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0375704884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
A young girl is murdered in a cemetery. And Wexford's doctor has prescribed no alcohol, no rich food and, above all, no police work. When a young girl's body is found in a London cemetery and the local police, under the command of Wexford's nephew, are baffled, Wexford decides to brave his doctor's wrath and the condescension of the London police by doing a little investigating of his own. A compelling story of mysterious identity and untimely death, Murder Being Once Done is Rendell at her most sublime. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

Backcloth

Author: Dirk Bogarde
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1448208238
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
______________ 'Desperately moving' - The Daily Telegraph First published in 1986, Backcloth is volume four of Dirk Bogarde's best-selling memoirs Filling the gaps left between his previous memoirs, as well as highlighting new episodes, Backcloth explores the patterns of pleasure and pain that have made up Bogarde's extraordinary life. Based on personal letters, notebooks and diaries and covering many aspects of a celebrated life, we share experiences from his family home in Hampstead through to his farmhouse retreat in Provence. This memoir highlights the people, emotions and experiences that made him into the man loved by so many. Written with all the honesty, wit and intelligence that made Bogarde such a popular writer, Backcloth is both eloquent and touching.

There's a Spider in This Book

Author: Claire Freedman
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
ISBN: 9781509830787
Category : Cats
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
There's a spider in this book. Are you brave enough to take a look?Eric the spider can't understand why people scream and run away from him. He only wants to say hello. But Fluffy the cat wants to eat Eric, so he's hiding. It's up to the reader to find Eric on every spread and maybe finally catch a glimpse of him with the surprise lift-the-flap ending!A funny and engaging story written by internationally bestselling author, Claire Freedman, and brought to life by Mike Byrne's hilarious and colourful illustrations.

Snakes and Ladders

Author: Dirk Bogarde
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
An account of the English actor's life from his trials in an army training camp to his challenging role as Von Aschenbach in the film 'Death in Venice'. He also tells of friends and relatives who helped him on the way to success.

Other Names for Love

Author: Taymour Soomro
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374604665
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
A charged, hypnotic debut novel about a boy’s life-changing summer in rural Pakistan: a story of fathers, sons, and the consequences of desire. At age sixteen, Fahad hopes to spend the summer with his mother in London. His father, Rafik, has other plans: hauling his son to Abad, the family’s feudal estate in upcountry, Pakistan. Rafik wants to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family—to make him a man. He enlists Ali, a local teenager, in this project, hoping his presence will prove instructive. Instead, over the course of one hot, indolent season, attraction blooms between the two boys, and Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and its inhabitants: the people, who revere and revile his father in turn; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and most of all, Ali, who threatens to unearth all that is hidden. Decades later, Fahad is living abroad when he receives a call from his mother summoning him home. His return will force him to face the past. Taymour Soomro’s Other Names for Love is a tale of masculinity, inheritance, and desire set against the backdrop of a country’s troubled history, told with uncommon urgency and beauty.

Oops-a-Daisy!

Author: Claire Freedman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781589253988
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
With Mama's warm, steady gaze and patient smile, she conveys to readers that parents are with their children every step of the way---even when those steps may be tentative. And, in the book's final pages, when Daisy finally hops, skips and jumps, the happiness that radiates from the tip of her floppy ears to the bottoms of her paws proves that persistence really does pay off.