Customer Reviews

Richard Burton, very close up,

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was given this book as a child and loved it then. However, with the passage of 30 years, this book has become thoroughly out of date. It's amazing that Burton 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 in many 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.

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 but this book is dry and plodding. I recommend Melvin Bragg's Burton bio instead of this one from 1971.