Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

by Roger Lewis

Thirteen years in the writing, Erotic Vagrancy doesn't only surpass every other biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton yet to appear, this rich, vital and passionately articulated book, which is as extravagant and wayward as its two subjects, is also about celebrity, creativity, being flawed, being brilliant, sexuality, the intermingling of a low and a highbrow existence, pride, insecurity, attraction and repulsion, and devilry.

We see Taylor the child actress exchanging dogs and horses for husbands. We see Burton emerging from the mists and brimstone of Wales to be the greatest theatrical animal of his generation. The pair come together in Rome during the making of Cleopatra, which gives Lewis the opportunity for a major farcical set-piece. We then enter a world of jewels and private jets, vodka, yachts and furs - the splendid vulgarity of the Sixties, where the narrative of Taylor and Burton becomes a Pop Art story.

Then, inevitably, it all goes wrong, with alcoholism, violence, recrimination and divorce ( twice ) - with Burton, whom Lewis depicts as a Faustus figure, damned by fame, dead at fifty-eight.

Stephen Fry has said, 'It is one of the very best biographies I have ever read. One of the best books about fame, desire, Hollywood and mid-to-late twentieth century culture ever written. Inside which, brilliant, hilarious and sensitive insights on all manner of subjects fizz and froth. Magnificent, terrible, tragic, triumphant.'

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film, Biography Memoir, History, Memoir

605 pages, Hardcover

Published October 26, 2023

Reviews

[Anna Bogutskaya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I cannot tell yet whether I loved or hated this book, but I can tell that no editor was employed.

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

At just over 600 pages this is a mammoth biography of the controversial Hollywood couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. I have read a few other high quality biographies on the subject in the past, but this one was very unique and engaging. I'm hard pressed to try and verbalize just how this biography was served up to the reader, but I'll give it the old college try. It certainly wasn't in the strictly dry/historical style of stating the hard facts in chronological order that can sometimes bore the reader. This was a concoction mixed of stream of consciousness, poetry in motion, a blunt crassness, and an occasional "off the beaten path" diversion to peripheral players surrounding these two. The outcome was an irreverent book about a Hollywood couple that had an animalistic hunger for each other and didn't care who they hurt/pushed out of the way to satisfy it. We are treated throughout the book to fascinating excerpts from Richard Burton's diaries and the minute details of movies that Taylor and Burton starred in together and individually. The book is chock full of juicy details such as one of Richard's nicknames for Elizabeth: "monkey nipples". Need I say more?

Thank you to the publisher Hachette Book Group, riverrun who provided an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

[Dominic H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a provocative, self-indulgent work of egotism masking as a story of (amongst other things) egotism, that shouldn't work and yet - maddeningly - does. Every time you are ready to hurl the book away because of some crass comment it's followed so quickly with acute insight that you don't. Every time you groan because here Lewis is taking you through many pages of an unstructured analysis essentially of what a Burton and/or Taylor film means to him, you stifle it because you are so quickly engrossed in the quality of the observation. It gets to the stage when you don't even mind when Lewis writes openly about himself.
Baffling, acute, digressive, undisciplined, thoughtful, selfish, observant, laconic, opinionated, well written, vulgar, knowledgeable, insensitive. This book is all of these things and more. And despite myself, I have to say mostly brilliant.

[Sue Barnard · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to read a good book about Taylor and Burton, don't read this one. What should be a fascinating account is rambling and tedious, more the writer's critique of them, respectively, and their films, than a biography. The prologue alone is enough to put you off.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was completely floored by this epic, overwhelming, at times disgusting low modernist account of the life and times of these two charismatic monsters, written like Ian Penman if viagra rather than heroin was his tipple of choice. I'd never read anything by Lewis before, and though this high-wire style seems pretty ill-suited to his other subjects (an entire book on Charles Hawtrey!) here, it works like a fever dream. (It's also surprisingly astute in its critical judgements, rating highly the surrealist late Taylor films like Boom!, Secret Ceremony or The Driver's Seat, and coming down firmly on 'racist and fascist' British war films). The book is endorsed by various people whose opinions I usually wouldn't share, let's say, but aside from two small asides (an opening bit on 'lady academics' and late on, a bizarre and ill-informed claim that the 'gender fluidity' of the young means the disappearance of voluptuous women - errrr, no) you'd never know the man worked for The Oldie and the Telegraph, and it's all much more Barthes than it is Littlejohn. A staggering performance of controlled mania, hallucinatory and overwhelming; I wish young writers had some of this absolute fearlessness.

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is extensively researched over many years as the lengthy prologue makes clear, it appears that the author was more keen on letting us know that he had done this much research, rather than editing it all down into a readable book. The book is over long, has no clear focus, you do get glimpses of the appetite of these two people and what stardom was like in the 70's. I gave up when the author's relentless misogyny became too much to ignore. He doesn't seem to like either of them but particularly Elizabeth Taylor, so why he spent over a decade researching their lives and working this book is a mystery. Why Marina Hyde recommended this book is even more puzzling.

[Laura Van · Rating 1 out of 5]

full of one criticism after another

I’ve probably read every book that has been published on Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It’s quite obvious this author does not like them, and the author especially dislikes Elizabeth. Everyone has faults, but no legitimate biography should be written by an author who demeans and belittles their subjects on every page.

[Debbi Barton · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's probably one of the worst and most vilest biographies I have ever read. Nearly 700 pages of self-indulgent ramblings. I had to check if this was self-published as I couldn't believe a publishing house like Quercus would take this on. The prologue has to be the longest.
It took the author 13 years to write. So I guess he started writing it as Elizabeth Taylor was nearing the end of her life, safely knowing he would escape libel defamation of character. Clearly could have done with editing down by at least of a third (most being the author's opinions about things nothing to do with Taylor or Burton). I don't think I have ever disliked a book so much as this one. I persevered to 72%, but I wonder why I wasted so much of my precious time and emotional energy on it.

[Mr Paul Davies · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know more about Roger Lewis and his massive library

Had to give this up after a dozen pages. The word ‘I’ cropped up far too often for my liking.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assiduous, acerbic, bitchy, highbrow, lowbrow and all the brows inbetween; exhaustive, digressive, playful, vituperative; a work that swings from passages of blazing passionate declamation to grumpy-old-man irascibility; that simultaneously wants to hymn a certain period in pop culture and start a fight with the modern age. Unlike any other biography or film-related title out there, and easily the book of the year.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hostile to Taylor and Burton, this isn't so much biography as an irreverent and self-indulgent 600+ page essay on the couple as the charismatic monsters of their time.

Lewis sounds like a garrulous raconteur, reclining in a velvet smoking jacket as he tells his gossipy, scurrilous tales with long digressions, name-dropping everyone from Hollywood to the Windsors, and getting bogged down in all the minutiae of the filmography and Burton's stage performances.

Along the way we hear about Taylor's extravagances and melodrama, her hypochondria, her appetites for men, pills, booze and diamonds; and Burton's 'pact with the devil' selling out his wife and classical theatre career for Hollywood, alcoholism and Taylor.

If you want a chronological, objective, fact-based and fair biography, step away - this is idiosyncratic, subjective, self-indulgent, probably libelous, grumpy in places and consistently bitchy - and that is precisely where the entertainment value lies!

[Ezra Lacroix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roger Lewis decried the standard form of biography, the cradle to grave approach that, as he posits, floats above the subjects with a degree of condescension due to the panoramic view that a writer would have that the subjects would not.

To be honest, I can’t see how this is condescending or anything that could be avoided. Lewis does indeed do the same anyway but decides to add a couple of hundred pages of rampant egotism, peppering everything with his own opinions that generally err on the side of utter contempt and disgust for his subjects. He’s really not doing anything different here in the way he believes and professes he is and this is actually a rather tabloid take on the subjects. Lewis certainly has wit and intelligence and acerbic style, but this becomes very tiresome, especially when he reverts to rabid misogyny and completely reduces Taylor to an “American Princess “ with little talent and nothing more. He also has some disdain for Burton but being a fellow WelshMAN, he reserves his sympathy for him alone (which is barely).

Taylor is skewered beyond recognition, and so this feels like an epic sized takedown and hatchet job, with little value. I kept thinking of Lewis as the man at the dinner table you somehow wound up at, calling you a woke snowflake and easily offended and humourless. Nah, actually I just can’t take too much enjoyment out 600 ODD PAGES of vitriol for a woman who was more self aware than he dares give her credit. Liz usually laughed at herself first, but Lewis would have it that she was a sex crazed airhead, masochist and deluded hypochondriac without a shred of substance. No dimensions are offered beyond this (unsurprisingly her aids work is not mentioned, despite it being a huge part of her life and legacy). This becomes a total bore in the end. Baffled by the rhapsodic reviews.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can be said with certainty about anybody...

"I'm growing skeptical of biography as a genre. It turns art and artists into a mere formulaic exposition. a list of goings on and daily life, statements, calculations, specifications. Theres a sense of finality and self satisfied air"

Lewis has been reasonably criticized for installing his opinions, biases, and speculations into the biography. But it is one of the reasons I loved this book.

He spends some time talking about the many biographies, articles, etc. on Burton and Taylor that are conflicting, debunked, or flagrantly misinformed. And it adds to the mystic, indicative of the mythologizing of Burton and Taylor in their time and on.

Lewis has a habit of exhaustive lists, digressions, and trailing off into seemingly irrelevant detail such as the lives entangled or even simply brushed by Burton and Taylor. But it lends to the potency of their relationship, how no number of these people ever stood a chance in comparison.

And I was rapt. Truly enamored in a way I wasn't before. I've been making my way through the filmography of them both in tandem with reading.

Lewis documents Taylor as a woman with no intention of being a symbol of anything other than herself. Despite her unconventional life and dominance, she wasn't an ideal of feminism. She wasn't lauded as an acting talent as much as a magnetism on screen as Elizabeth Taylor. Her exorbitant wealth and glamour and controlled image was as mocked as it was admired. Despite her lifelong battle with health/hypochondria/pill addiction, "there was never any indication there was ever a fragile girl inside. If she wanted to be beaten into submission, it's so she can kick and bite right back."

Lewis dissects Burton as almost the opposite. He was crude and impolite, easily agitated. And obviously haunted. Driven to an early grave due to alcoholism implemented as an anecdote for some deep insecurities and demons. He respected the art of acting and filmmaking and literature. Although he also often appears as Richard Burton, there is an undeniable command that contemporary leading men lack. He was loved; not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

An unholy matrimony that is frankly one of the most compelling and encapsulating pairings of the 20th century.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Erotic Vagrancy is an unflattering portrait of screen icons Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Author Roger Lewis focuses on the excesses, the boozing, Elizabeth’s illnesses, the pursuit of money, the way the couple was ridiculed by others in parodies of their movies. To quote the author, “In this book I try to evoke the age of Sixties excess – the freaks and groupies, the private jets and jewels and the steam yachts sailing in an azure sea; the mess and splendour of material goods; the magnificent bad taste and greed and money smelling like jasmine.” The narrative occasionally is interesting, but often cringe worthy…as I assume Mr. Lewis desired. Some of us who lived through the 60’s remember the decade a little differently: Vietnam, Jack and Jackie, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the Cuban missile crisis, Neil Armstrong’s first step onto the moon. I voluntarily reviewed an advance copy of this book rom NetGalley.

[Chris Molnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t want it to be shorter or more conventional - the nutty length and digressions are an essential part of the appeal. He has something crucial to say about celebrity and the frontiers of human nature. But the writing is sometimes simply lax and circular (Boom! barely has enough meat on it as a film for one section, let alone to be mentioned constantly and repetitively throughout), and while he amusingly distracts you by listing the shit-Rashomon disagreements and obvious inaccuracies of the trashy celeb bios that he is competing with, he introduces a number of his own “facts” that can quickly confirmed to be wrong (Koestler didn’t die in a railway carriage?) that threaten to undermine the whole project. Could have used a demented Gottlieb to his twacked Caro to keep it in check while staying ridiculous, though it’s still an accomplishment. Gets an extra star because I was pretty into it, which is remarkable for a completely insane book about a couple who I still believe probably only had one truly great movie…

[Oscar Jelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bawdy, bonkers and a bit bloody long - but utterly brilliant, too, like a gossip column written by Thomas Pynchon and a horny Oxford don. I knew Elizabeth Taylor only as a Warhol print and Richard Burton only as the narrator of the 1978 recording of Jeff Lynne's War of the Worlds, so went in with no real preconceptions and read the book as a novel, which I think is probably the best way to approach it (Lewis says as much in the prologue). That said, his analyses of the films that Taylor and Burton starred in, either together or separately, are very strong - detailed and perceptive, but also kind of hallucinatory: his basic premise is that the way the two were on screen is ultimately continuous with how they were in the rest of their lives, which makes for an especially trippy blurring of fact and fiction. A couple of fogeyish digressions diminish the surprise of reaching the end and spotting Michael Gove and Toby Young in the acknowledgements, but in general I had no trouble at least entertaining Lewis' take on these exorbitant, utterly uninhibited people, who it seems were once as famous as God. He's inspired by their vulgarity, their shameless extravagance and vaunting celebrity - and I in turn was inspired by Lewis' almost ludicrous self-confidence; I can't imagine many people were crying out for such a book (a few boomers, I guess?), but he wrote it anyway and it's one of the best things I've read all year.

Also made me want to tackle his notorious anti-biography of Anthony Burgess, in which he apparently exposes my posthumous benefactor as "a carnivalesque showman" who "wrote millions of words to conceal the fact he was not any good as a writer". Oi!

[Zak · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a waste of time. Roger Lewis is not funny, snappy, or interesting as a biographer or writer.

This isn't a biography. This is an ego trip. Roger has more in common with the source of this "biography" than he will ever realise. He is just unlikeable and infuriating.

There are some passages that flow, and that is when Roger actually works along the lines of the (obviously his opinion, as conveyed in this block of bullocks) formula of a biography.


Lewis is just a self-centred, bitchy, petty, dullard who thinks his writing is up there with the literary gods. I read all of it, for the mere purpose of not being defeated by this.

I'm going to use this book to recreate my own piece on Burton & Taylor. A visual collage. A cut-up novel to excise this anger, that this terribly bloated book created inside of me.

Don't bother.

Rubbish.

[Robert Swanson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is difficult to read 600 pages of virtual hatred for Elizabeth Taylor and disgust for Richard Burton. What was the point of this book? The author has a tiny bit of respect for Taylor's talents and is ecstatic for Burton's acting. the 'Erotic Vagrancy' is a reference to how they needed each other and how she destroyed him (according to the author).

It was interesting reading about their films together and how they captured a time and place that is long gone. Unfortunately, the author went down countless rabbit holes about co-stars and other actors that are virtually unknown today. The author's depth of knowledge about countless long-dead actors was riddled with nasty side-quips and minutia that bogged down an already insufferable book.

[Ruth Blunden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous read. My favourite story is Liz being cross because she can't have a fireplace on their private jet. Proper glamourous , beautiful people.

[Bookthesp1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a massive fan……..of Roger Lewis. This is essential reading even though it shouldn’t work. It took Lewis thirteen years to write ( and research presumably?). Lewis lists obsessively Taylor’s illnesses or mock illnesses; her perambulations with property: Burtons spending on her and the ex husband’s and their legacies. It’s often just annotated lists!! Plus diarised filmography.
Lewis also seems to have dropped his trademark footnotes - so prevalent in his Peter Sellers brick like biography. Now digressions and tangents are integrated into the main text - this is a sort of covid or at least illness book in that it sounds like he pulled it together in a sort of fugue state of hospitalised fevers and bed pan antics seeing dream like images and convoluted stories about his subjects. Lewis is also a waspish marmite like writer whose short book on Charles Hawtry was considered cruel and his Anthony Burgess book was an unexpurgated reassembling of Burgesses fantasy lies.

So much could go wrong but this reader is not surprised that it’s probably his best book - wonderfully gossipy; revealing and lovingly in love with Taylor and Burton whose Welsh origins he shared. This is stunningly well written / fascinating in its examination of Burtons emergence as an actor and then a star and gob smacking in its judgements about the narrative of Burtons life with Taylor - a child actor who cost Burton more than his money !!
Lewis is fab on all Taylor’s husbands and predictably caustic about contemporary actors - Nicol Williamson is described as “physically repellant- a sort of human hyena” and with his “ peculiar up and down the stave gurgling voice and over intense demeanour “

A long book but every page a treat and a strong contender for best non fiction read of 2024 despite it only being February!! Read about their punch drunk ( literally) love and weep with tears of laughter. Crucially this isn’t a hatchet job - Lewis loves them both and is trying to find the key to their life apart and together- fabulous and highly recommended even if you know nothing about them.

A magnum opus methinks

[Eliza · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lazily misogynistic (I lost count of how many times Lewis called Taylor a witch), homophobic and puerile. I love the excess of Burton and Taylor but this excessive tome replete with non-sequiturs does them no justice. I had to check that this wasn’t written in the 60s and the author dead so outdated is it (front bottoms and booby-doos??!) but sadly he lives to potentially write more drivel. One star for the title (stolen from a papal statement) and quotes culled from Hollywood greats, including Burton and Taylor - Dietrich’s ‘why don’t you swallow your fucking diamonds and shut up’ is my personal favourite. But really this is shocking in all the wrong ways.

[Simon Dane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is how you write a biography. Well researched, intelligent, withering and full of amusing asides. He also captured the lives of Burton and Taylor impeccably- the genius in front of camera, the vulgar excesses and self orientation away from the camera. You cannot but feel that their lives whilst seemingly having everything possessed nothing.

[Victoria Castillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

adored

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure what the aim was but I wasted my money for sure.

[Sian Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve got to say they are both intriguing characters and I did enjoy reading about their lives and their affair. But this book was far too long. Unnecessarily so. This author included a lot of details and facts uninteresting to me and in my opinion slightly irrelevant? Lots of references to other actors, artists or notable figures (sometimes their contemporaries, sometimes not.) Some of these references were interesting and helpful in providing context and giving you a feel for the period. But why the hell were there so many references to Francis Bacon? 400 years on what has he got to do with Burton and Taylor?
I also found this slightly uncomfortable at times. Because the author writes about these two (Elizabeth most especially,) in such a perverse way. Often discussing her weight and her body in a derogatory way and grossly detailing her sexuality. He reads a little bit like an unreliable narrator in this sense. He did not paint Elizabeth in a flattering light. Portraying her as a lazy, overweight diva and a hussy. Yet in other accounts of her or old videos and interviews I find her an immensely likeable and dynamic person.
While I can admit it’s good for a biographer to avoid sycophancy, this author took it too far.
And finally, I consider and often see these two referred to as one of the greatest love stories/ romances in popular culture. But in this book… Where was the love??? Portrayed their romance very unromantically. And that was mostly what I was reading it for. So while it was well researched and I did learn a lot. Overall I have to say it was a bit creepy and boring.

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Towards the end of this long, sprawling biography, Lewis writes “I personally want everything concerning Burton and Taylor to be louder, more clamorous, more garish, like unicorn herds carved in crystal” - which is the perfect encapsulation of this book.

Lewis’s rambling, discursive, intrusive style wouldn’t suit most subjects (and probably maddens a lot of readers), but fits this larger and life couple like a bejewelled glove. Craig Brown has a similar approach to biographies, but is lighter and wittier, so I’d like to read his take on Liz and Dick - but this is a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, deep dive which is never less than entertaining.

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well researched but the author’s misogyny and apparent dislike for Burton and Taylor makes the book feel more like a burn book than a biography. The book’s rambling (lack of) structure also lends to this.

[Helen Cummings · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an amazing, sprawling, mesmerising mess but somehow it works if you can stay with the 600 pages plus that captures the celebrity, the vulgarity and the sheer excesses of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s lives and relationships.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a long boozy lunch with a brilliantly waspish friend

There are three people in this literary biography, Taylor, Burton and the author. I know which one I prefer and its the latter every time, I loved it.

[Izzy]

truly psychedelic…I have to respect the author for letting his freak flag fly and leaning into this fever dream