Customer Reviews

For the Time Being Hb

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This book is about half biographical fragments arranged loosely by topic - the Second World War and his films naturally loom largest. And about half reviews. There is also - something I hadn't noticed until Amazon pointed this out- an introductory piece on the horrors of a severe stroke. It's well-written, but in my view - I hate to take a dissenting view - reveals a man who understandably is both narcissistic and superficial. His reviews are luvvy material - Russell Harty, to whom he owed his publishing career, after being allowed to reminisce for forty minutes on TV; Brigitte Bardot; Charlotte Rampling; Peter Ustinov. Antony (Anthony?) Sher. And related material - Peter Mayle on Provence; Joseph Losey; how to record an audiobook; Swiss Family Robinson; Visconti's wheelchair bound life after a stroke; the Times Lit Supplement. His wartime experience was, he says, interpreting aerial photographs - judging by an advert in this (Penguin) edition his other books deal with this theme in greater detail. He reviewed seven World War 2 related books (reviews dated 1988 and 1991 in the Daily Telegraph) and is innocently free from any trace of revisionism, though he made a couple more articles on the theme of 200 hostile letters about his reviews. What would he have done if he hadn't been good looking in his youth? He reminds me of many women who describe themselves as 'artistic' as a default position to hide something of a chasm of their awareness, in the way kittens whose eyelids are sewn up were found to never develop full sight.