Strung together as a parallel biography of the four protagonists but focussing more on their hellrasing antics this is a barnstoming read.Sometimes it does feel like it was cobbled together from four individual biographies but it is entertaining. It also leaves one with some rather mixed feelings about the hellrasers in the acting profession (and there is a wide supporting cast to the four leads). Is it a tragedy that they lost some of their best years to the bottle or is it just that it was part of their make-up and without their thirst they wouldn't have been the same performers ?For one thing does emerge and that is just how good they were when they were on form.Today's actors should take note. All the teeth and hair and adopting orphans might make you an icon to some but doesn't make you very interesting. Similarly all DUI convictions and tabloid exposes don't make you a great performer. It's the fire in the belly of men like these hellrasers that makes them captivating on screen and I think we could do with a few more like them.That said reading the book has rather put me off drinking the hard stuff for the moment. But I've put a few of their greatest films on my rental list.