Richard Burton: A Life [Mass Market Paperback]

Melvyn Bragg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1990

A biography of Richard Burton containing his own words, through the co-operation of members of his family who made available to Bragg various diaries and letters. There are also fresh insights from Burton's peers, to provide a frank and intimate account of his life. The sensational highlights of Burton's private life are well known - his marriages to Elizabeth Taylor, abundant drinking and womanizing and jet-setting lifestyle. Less well-known are his own thoughts on acting, alcoholism and his roots in Wales. These are all revealed in extracts from his diaries and letters. The contributions from Sir John Gielgud, Lauren Bacall, Sir Alec Guiness, John Hurt, John Le Carre and many others add an extra dimension to this biography.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British author Bragg quotes extensively from Burton's notebooks in which he related his most private thoughts. The revelations will appeal to readers avid for gossip but they are more interesting as evidence of the late actor's writing gifts and of his literary ambitions. The biography, however, is heavily repetitious about the mutually obsessive loving and destructive Taylor/Burton relationship: their years in the international spotlight, their profligate spending and insatiable drinking; their extreme generosity to those in need. More affecting are reminiscences of Burton's Welsh family, his mentors Philip Burton and Emlyn Williams, friends and co-stars who share memories of the rise of a poor miner's son to world renown. There are also perceptive critiques of the star's successes on stage ( Hamlet , Camelot , Equus ) and in film ( Becket , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ). A reader regrets that Burton's death in 1984 at age 58 cut short a life so luminous and full of promise still. Photos. First serial to Life and Ladies' Home Journal; BOMC main selection; Readers' Digest Condensed Book selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Can a book about so public a figure as Burton hope to be revealing? The answer here is a resounding yes, for Bragg was granted access by Burton's widow Sally to the late actor's notebooks, which he kept with some regularity over the last 20 years of his life. The material in them, quoted at great length, is never less than fascinating and reveals a profound sadness about the man. For one thing, he was a frustrated writer; the notebooks were meant at various times to be a springboard for an autobiography or novel. Moreover, Bragg has interviewed many of the principals in Burton's life (and the exceptions, notably Elizabeth Taylor and Sybil Burton, have talked to no one). The result is far and away the best book on a figure who is by turn heroic and tragic, magnificent and pathetic. Highly recommended. BOMC main selection.
- Thomas Wiener, formerly with "American Film," Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Warner Books; Repack edition (July 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446359386
• ISBN-13: 978-0446359382
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,008,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richard Burton: A Life - And What a Life it Was., July 2, 2007

By 

Eve Galewitz (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Richard Burton: A Life (Mass Market Paperback)

Melvyn Bragg's biography of Richard Burton (nee Richard Walter Jenkins) was absolutely top drawer, thanks not only to Mr. Bragg's wonderful, in depth writing style, but to the generosity of Burton's widow, Sally Hay, who gave the author unprecedented access to Mr. Burton's hitherto unpublished notebooks.

Burton was continually being discovered and mentored throughout his early days. Bragg deals with Burton's good fortune in being "adopted" by schoolteacher Philip Burton when he was a mere lad, and access to Philip's diaries show how Richard's native intelligence, passion and enthusiasm were harnessed and directed by Philip. The next mentor was the brilliant writer ("The Corn is Green"), director and actor, Emlyn Williams who first put the boy on the boards and got him to the BBC. Later Gielgud, Olivier, and Anthony Quayle would play a part in Burton's success.

If a man can be judged primarily based on the affect he had on other people, than Richard Burton was in that alone an absolute success. His well-documented generosity is evident from his earliest days as a reader of poetry and literature on BBC Radio, when he was lucky to garner 10 quid a reading and sent a portion of that back to the family (12 brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews). In his final days, when performing in a less than stellar mini-series with his magnificently talented daughter, Kate Burton, he passed on his civility and generosity to fellow actors, by teaching her to remain behind the camera during another actor's close-up so he/she would have a person to react to and with. He is beloved in his native Wales, whose tongue was his first language, whose sports teams he followed wherever he was in the world and in whose verdant green hillsides he built that voice that would echo across the stages of London, New York and on movie screens worldwide.

Richard Burton was no saint (unlike Becket, whom he played to perfection opposite Peter O'Toole). His appetite for wine, women and song remained with him throughout his life. In a strange and ironic quirk, Burton, who so revered family and womanhood/motherhood (idealized for him in his mother-sister, Cis) was flagrant in his infidelity to his first wife, Sybill Williams. Sybil Williams Burton in the best of British tradition had a stiff upper lip about he whole business, and maintained a solid homebase which Burton would inevitably return. And indeed for more than a decade this was the case; until he ventured to Rome for the filming of Cleopatra.

Bragg is even-handed in his portrayal of Elizabeth Taylor. She is neither villain or angel; but a woman of profound passions, a streetwise business sense and emotional life that may have brought on or at the very least greatly exasperated her numerous accidents and health issues. Their love was by all accounts like an earthquake. While Burton was mad for Taylor, he never expected this affair to end his marriage. Taylor, however was not just any conquest. Having lived through the machinations of a notorious stage mother, the heavy-handedness of Louis B. Mayer at MGM, the death of her other great love, Mike Todd and the public condemnation of he role in the Debbie-Eddie-Liz scandal and her notorious tough as nails negotiation of the first million dollar contract for Cleopatra, Elizabeth was a force to be reckoned with. Although she was known for the screaming and sometimes physically battering battles with Todd, Fisher and later with Burton, it was through her absolute acceptance in her role as Burton's Mistress, that she won her man. In fact, Taylor would play this role 2 years while Burton would traverse the Swiss Alps between his home in Celigny with Sybil and daughter, Kate and Taylor's home in Gstaad. Truthful, clever, a talented actress, a challenging partner, an endlessly exciting and loving lover, and in her salad days the most beautiful woman in the world; one can understand Burton's fascination with her. Sadly, their love story that was to begin like a meteor, would struggle to a sad and sloppy end. Taylor's utlimate tragedy, if we are to believe Bragg's account and that of other writers, is that she wouldn't or couldn't give up the ghost. Until his death, she was like Scarlett O'Hara thinking of new and different ways to get back her man.

Suzy Hunt the amazon, blond, model would be Burton's 3rd wife. He was unstinting in his praise of her, as she selflessly aided him as he was by the mid to late 1970's crippled with arthritis from years of hard living (rugby, drinking & a 5-pack a day cigarette habit). It can be noted that Suzy came along at just when he needed her, but being young (some 20 years his junior) would weary of her role as nursemaid and would leave Burton by the early 1980's. Like Sybil Burton, who has remained completely silent about her life with Richard, Suzy Hunt had done the same. She came and went, and other than an appearance at one of his memorial services, was not to enter his life again.

Perhaps Sally Hay Burton fairs best in this biography due to her generosity and openess to the author, but in my opinion, she has at last been granted her due, as Burton's last love. Burton's own notebooks speak glowingly of this incredibly competent, hardworking and independent woman, who unlike Taylor and Hunt never expected herself to be in a relationship with a world-famous actor of Mr. Burton's stature. I was struck at how much sadder his untimely death was in regards to Sally, since by his own account and hers, they were quite happy and Burton had a last found a modicum of peace in this relationship. The press was unfair to Sally during the time of Burton's death. She was blamed for his Welsh family not being in attendance at his funeral in Switzerland (it was Burton's choice to be interred in the Swiss village he lived had in for some 25 years) which was due to a misunderstanding caused by Burton's brother Graham Jenkins, who showed up in Switzerland with BBC reporter in tow. Sally herself now sees it was a mistake to exclude Taylor from the ceremony, but quite rightly she knew that the dignity of the service would be destroyed by the onslaught of press jockying to get pictures of Taylor's last goodbye to Burton. In fact, there were numerous memorials in Wales, New York & London at which the various wives and family would have a chance to pay their respects. Taylor in fact would sit squarely in the middle of the Welsh at the Memorial in London.

Scholarship was what Richard Burton most revered above all things. He was notorious for never watching movies and for never being without a book in hand. Althought he enjoyed the odd thriller, he was quite the intellectual in his tastes; he was a man of the classics; Poetry and Shakespearean verse could be recited forwards and literally backwards. He was a renowned conqueror of languages and was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish. and had a go at some of the non-romance languages as well (Serbo-Croat). It is quite conceivable that Burton would have made an excellent Oxford don, and even had a memorable 6 month go of it in the mid-seventies as a visiting instructor. He would never go on location without first stocking up on volumes of reading materials and one of his great gifts (from Suzy Hunt) was to have his books put into specially built library shelves at his Celigny home.

A lad's lad, a natural aristocrat, a spirited athlete on the pitch, a natural student, world renowned lover, one of the greatest actor's of the 20th century. A man who insisted on living life on his own terms and doing it in great style. Truly a rich life.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burton's diaries make this worth it, November 9, 2002

By 

Candace Scott (Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Richard Burton: A Life (Hardcover)

This is a well-researched and thoughtfully-written biography of a man who was perhaps the most famous man in the world in the decade of the 1960's. Now, sadly, Burton's legacy and fame have dimmed considerably and he's remembered more as Elizabeth Taylor's fifth (and sixth) husband. He was much more than that. I have always thought Burton overacted miserably in most of his roles and I was chiefly intrigued with him because of his beautiful physicality and because was an erudite, deeply intelligent man. He was also a prodigious reader and a keen intellect, but this genius seemed utterly wasted on Liz, a woman with whom he shared a passionate sex life, but precious little else.

The highlight of this book is the inclusion of over 100 pages of Burton's diaries, kept meticuously from 1965 until his death. Burton writes candidly, wittily and brilliantly. It's devilishly exciting to read his words about Liz and his vicious put downs of others, including a visceral tirade against poor Lucille Ball. He also muses on occasion about his autistic daughter, Jessica, who was hidden by the Burtons and kept in an institution all her life.

Burton had a larger-than-life appetite for living, sex, booze... you name it. He was self-destructive, manic-depressive and difficult, but all of those things make for a compelling character and this book illuminates him like no other.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Troubled, Fascinating Man, January 28, 2004

By 

The JuRK (Our Vast, Cultural Desert) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Richard Burton: A Life (Hardcover)

There's a photo of Richard Burton in this book that's probably my own personal favorite: he's sitting on the back step of his house and completely absorbed in a book, oblivious to everything else around him.
He loved to read and there's also a photo of the inside of his house--and it looks like a library! (In fact, the only thing he ever asked for in his divorces were his books).

But what really makes this biography worth reading is that the author quotes Burton's own "notebooks," his diary that he kept over the years. You definitely get a deeper look into this celebrity as a person than most show business books provide.

He was certainly a conflicted man. Here was someone who was starring in the biggest movie ever made (CLEOPATRA), having an affair with the world's most glamorous actress (he'd buy Liz the Hope Diamond as one gift), living on a yatch off Monte Carlo, and yet he would grouse in his diary: "The French, American and Russian revolutions have meant nothing--the rich still get everything!" (I'm paraphrasing a bit).
I believe his own personal demons brought out his best performances: his HAMLET (available on DVD), BECKET (still not on DVD!), WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, EQUUS. There was such a despair in his eyes that it rarely looked like acting at all.
There always seemed to be something haunting him: his poor Welsh upbringing and alcoholic father, his abandonment of the "legitimate British stage" for the "Hollywood quick buck," his guilt over failed marriages. Unfortunately, he turned to drink too often to numb himself.

Richard Burton was a great actor. Even if some of the pain and rage was real.