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TIME TO SPEAK
A Time to Speak Anthony Quayle and Peggy Ashcroft
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Anthony Quayle
49 books2 followersSir John Anthony Quayle, CBE was an English actor and director.
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December 2, 2015
I might be the planet's biggest Anthony Quayle fangirl (If there is another please reach out to me so we can dish)and this book is a big part of why I love him so. This is an ambitious and well-written attempt to tell a life story. Quayle unfortunately ran out of time and died before he could write much more than half of it. What remains, deals in depth with his young life, early days in the theater, experiences in WW2 and post-war career as a director. It stops before it gets to his film career, which is really tragic. He worked with so many greats and has a real knack for bringing the characters of his friends and acquaintances to life. I would really have liked to have heard his behind the scenes stories from Lawrence of Arabia, for example.
Quayle wrote a novel about his experiences in the war and it shows. He can definitely paint a scene, walk a reader through a plot point, etc. One of things that most impressed me about the book is its honesty. He really does look at his mistakes and admit them. When he talks about old disagreements and bad memories, it's with an older, wiser man's sense of forgiveness. He doesn't over state his importance as an actor or director, nor does he try to make a hero of himself in the war section. If anything he talks about what a dismal failure the whole operation was and spends quite a lot of time talking about the less-glamorous aspects of it.
One of the things that's a joy about the book is the narrative arc of Quayle's love life is built in to the story. He doesn't sentimentalize any of his relationships, except perhaps his long, happy marriage, for which I think he can be forgiven.
Of course the theater nerd in me, picked up the book for the first-hand stories of greats like Tony Guthrie, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, and those are here to be sure. But I wound up really enjoying most the various settings of his life: the British public school he attended as a scholarship boy, the gritty life of a jobbing actor during the Depression in England, the cushy post in Gibraltor he gave up to play action hero as a sabotage commando in the Balkans and the disastrous mess that turned into. It was all entertaining and interesting.
Quayle wrote a novel about his experiences in the war and it shows. He can definitely paint a scene, walk a reader through a plot point, etc. One of things that most impressed me about the book is its honesty. He really does look at his mistakes and admit them. When he talks about old disagreements and bad memories, it's with an older, wiser man's sense of forgiveness. He doesn't over state his importance as an actor or director, nor does he try to make a hero of himself in the war section. If anything he talks about what a dismal failure the whole operation was and spends quite a lot of time talking about the less-glamorous aspects of it.
One of the things that's a joy about the book is the narrative arc of Quayle's love life is built in to the story. He doesn't sentimentalize any of his relationships, except perhaps his long, happy marriage, for which I think he can be forgiven.
Of course the theater nerd in me, picked up the book for the first-hand stories of greats like Tony Guthrie, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, and those are here to be sure. But I wound up really enjoying most the various settings of his life: the British public school he attended as a scholarship boy, the gritty life of a jobbing actor during the Depression in England, the cushy post in Gibraltor he gave up to play action hero as a sabotage commando in the Balkans and the disastrous mess that turned into. It was all entertaining and interesting.
Displaying 1 of 1 review