First serial to Life and Ladies' Home Journal BOMC main selection Readers' Digest Condensed Book selection.Ĭopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. A reader regrets that Burton's death in 1984 at age 58 cut short a life so luminous and full of promise still.
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 ). 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. 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. 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. One wonders if he read any more? Incidental Intelligenceīondo-San in Japan: Interview with Graham M.British author Bragg quotes extensively from Burton's notebooks in which he related his most private thoughts. He is so obviously enjoying the creation of his extroverted, Hemingway-esque, sadistic, sexually-maniacal boy-scout that in the end he becomes likable.”īack handed praise from the great man. “ he has the cordon-bleu nerve to attack one of my favourite discoveries: American short-order cooking.”ĭespite taking umbrage with Fleming’s treatment of American fast-food and describing the novel as “diffuse, urbane and empty”, he does offer some final, grudging respect: His brief ‘review’ particularly picked up on the gastronomical aspects of the novel describing Fleming as having a “pompous attitude to food and cocktails” and it clearly hit a nerve! Melvyn Bragg described Burton’s reading habits as “indiscriminate but he chews on whatever he finds and turns it into something for himself.” And chew he did. A clever schoolboy mind and atrociously vulgar.”īurton did not suffer fools and someone with an intellect as he possessed, a James Bond novel might have appeared very lightweight to him at first glance. “I went to bed at 9 and read a book of Ian Fleming’s called You Only Live Twice. The closest we might get is a short diary entry published in ‘Richard Burton: A Life’ (p. Once considered for the role of James Bond, he was a voracious reader and one wonders what he thought of Ian Fleming.
Today is the anniversary of the death of the great Richard Burton.
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