Godfrey: A Special Time Remembered

by Jill. Bennett

Book by Bennett, Jill, Goodwin, Suzanne, Ebel, Suzanne

1 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1983

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much indeed. Initially, I read it largely because I had a similar experience which changed my own life when I was young although my experience was complicated by the fact that the well-known man in question was married. Even though Godfrey was not married at the time when he and Jill began their unique relationship in the late 1940s and died only a few years after it began, the public still frowns on couples who have relationships vastly separated in time.
The book was beautifully written. Suzanne Goodwin is credited with writing the book in collaboration with Jill Bennett - no doubt she played a big part in it. As Suzanne Ebel I remember reading some of her novels with a theatrical theme.

Here is one of the memorable quotations from the book:

"You are supposed eventually to get over love. Nobody can pine forever. It becomes a self-indulgent invention, like Queen Victoria keeping rooms full of Albert’s clothes, or Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations" stopping the clocks and letting mice eat the wedding cake. So what I am writing, will look far-fetched and even impossible. Yet it is the plain truth. I never have got over the man I loved when I was very young."

Jill Bennett was a talented and successful actress and eventually married John Osborne who wrote a play about her relationship with Godfrey. Unfortunately, he was the complete opposite to Godfrey and she must have wondered how she became involved with Osborne in the first place. Their marriage was acrimonious to say the least. Sadly, Jill Bennett committed suicide in 1990.