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C.S. Burrough
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Sydneysider C.S. Burrough began life in the UK. After studying Performing Arts full-time he worked on West End theatre productions and toured shows internationally for nearly two decades, settling in Australia in the early 1980s. He has written and published since 1989 in anthologies and newspapers, producing full-length works, novellas and short stories and is a prolific book reviewer. Several of his works are held and catalogued in the National Library of Australia, and most are listed at AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. His historical saga Or Forever Be Damned (2014) was published by Silky Oak Press. He is a Featured Contributor in the Soul Vomit: Domestic Violence Aftermath (2014) anthology, by Broken Publications. He is a c Sydneysider C.S. Burrough began life in the UK. After studying Performing Arts full-time he worked on West End theatre productions and toured shows internationally for nearly two decades, settling in Australia in the early 1980s. He has written and published since 1989 in anthologies and newspapers, producing full-length works, novellas and short stories and is a prolific book reviewer. Several of his works are held and catalogued in the National Library of Australia, and most are listed at AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. His historical saga Or Forever Be Damned (2014) was published by Silky Oak Press. He is a Featured Contributor in the Soul Vomit: Domestic Violence Aftermath (2014) anthology, by Broken Publications. He is a contributing author to the Showcase: Spark (2024) anthology by Tale Publishing.
For previous work see AustLit: https://tinyurl.com/vvn87rf
Other links:
C S Burrough book review blog:
https://csburrough.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com Author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/csburrough
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Or Forever Be Damned
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My review of Cher: The Memoir, Part 1, by Cher
Cher: The Memoir, Part 1by CherMy rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Cher's much anticipated 432-page memoir has been analysed,criticised and praised by commentators quite at odds with one another, sinceits 2024 release. Diehard fans want one thing, bookworm historians wantanother, while detractors will always be just that, whatever she says or does.
Despite the famously dyslexic Cher reportedly hiring three
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Published on April 25, 2026 00:35
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My review of Cher: The Memoir, Part 1, by Cher
Cher: The Memoir, Part 1by CherMy rating: 5 out of 5 starsCher's much anticipated 432-page memoir has been analysed,criticised and praised by commenta
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Cher's much anticipated 432-page memoir has been analysed, criticised and praised by commentators quite at odds with one another, since its 2024 release. Diehard fans want one thing, bookworm historians want another, while detractors will always be j
Cher's much anticipated 432-page memoir has been analysed, criticised and praised by commentators quite at odds with one another, since its 2024 release. Diehard fans want one thing, bookworm historians want another, while detractors will always be just that, whatever she says or does. Despite the famously dyslexic Cher reportedly hiring three ghostwriters to assist her over seven years of rewrites, some legacy media critics have pooh-poohed it, with The Independent's Adam White calling the end result 'flat' while asserting that it does not 'sound like her' and asking 'where's the sass?' His take sounds to me to be less general than from a fan or cultist adherent's perspective. I see how her more hardcore 'in crowd' may have preferred more of their own lingo and niche wit. Yet one cannot expect the book to be so blinkered in its delivery – this had to speak to a far wider readership, on many of whom certain banter would have been lost. Cher-isms are by no means absent, they just not as bountiful as certain of her devotees might have preferred. There is certainly no shortage of jovial expletives which, to me, did indeed sound very Cher, her self-deprecating humour out on full display, her earthy candour in full force. The audiobook is mostly read by actor Stephanie J. Block, who has played Cher on Broadway – a choice perhaps necessitous because of Cher's dyslexia. Lay reader reviews are mixed, with a common complaint of over coverage of her ancestry, childhood, parentage, passion for fashion and namedropping being collectively drawn out to the point of tedium. I see their points, yet remained glued regardless. The flip side is that this sure gives bang for buck and never shies away from eyepopping anecdotes, so maybe it depends how much reading time one is willing to commit to this fascinating star. One consideration with any memoir is that the exercise is necessarily a self-absorbing business, and often the author becomes so caught up in the cathartic task of fine detail recall that segments of the finished work are of more interest to themselves than their readers. In Cher's case her dyslexia may, to some extent, have ruled out this common autobiographical syndrome, leaving us to conclude that the multi-handed ghost-writing and final editing is responsible here. The Memoir Part 1 covers her (admittedly protracted) journey through a bizarrely rocky childhood echoed in her 1971 hit single 'Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves', even at one point being held in an orphanage in Scranton, Pennsylvania, run by nuns who didn't want to release her back to her mother. She states: 'Often when I think of my family history it sounds like the opening of a Dickens novel,' but notes that 'resilience is in my DNA.' Her mother Georgia Holt married and divorced seven times, twice to Cher's father, Johnnie Sarkisian who would become a heroin addict with a 'penchant for larceny and a shaky relationship to employment'. Cher tells us: 'The women in my family rarely chose their men well.' Georgia even leaves one of her husbands for his brother. Exclaims the author: 'I mean, jeez. My family. You couldn't make it up.' Hauled around the country by the peripatetic but hardworking and beautiful Georgia, Cher changes school every five minutes, in shoes held together with elastic bands. There are ups between the growing up downs. When Georgia is based around Hollywood doing movie extra work, Cher lives around movie stars and plays in their front gardens with neighbourhood kids including Liza Minnelli, getting a peep through the front door at Judy Garland stood on the stairs holding a glass of something. When she is 15, 25-year-old Warren Beatty almost collides with her borrowed car and, unaware of her age, takes her home and entertains her to make good for his reckless driving, leading to her getting home late and receiving a verbal dressing down by her mother. When he later calls her at home, asking her out on dates, her mother, as besotted with Beatty as were most women, nearly faints hearing his voice, her tone switching from castigation to approval. Living in LA with family, 16-year-old Cher takes acting classes. In a crowded coffee shop break, she randomly meets fledgling 27-year-old songwriter and junior record producer Sonny Bono, with whom she later moves in with when out of housing options herself. Their relationship is initially platonic, with Cher acting as his cook and housekeeper. She writes that Bono thought she was 18, and that they remained just roommates until she was legal. Sonny urges her to quit acting class and pursue full-time music. The memoir moves into the '60s and '70s spotlight, through her unsteady six-year first marriage to Sonny, with whom she has baby Chastity (later to become Chaz), over whom Cher wins a contentious public custody battle. Then on to her four-year marriage to second husband Gregg Allman, with whom she has son Elijah Sky Blue Allman, and ends on a cliffhanger as she approaches the movie stardom status no one could have anticipated her could achieving. Early pre-fame teen tales include a gay party with her closeted best buddy Steve, which is raided by cops (this is pre-decriminalisation). The two escape through a bathroom window, pursued by said law enforcement. Back at home, Cher's grandmother grounds her. This is the first we read of this future gay icon being surrounded by her tribe, although she has already noted being around them through childhood, her mother being in movies and therefore friends with many in the industry. After living with Bono for some time, he arrives home one day, overhears her singing to the radio, and is surprised she can belt out any old tune. She soon hangs out with Sonny at Phil Spector's recording sessions in Hollywood's Gold Star Studios, initially as a sidekick and observer, then as an unpaid last minute backup vocalist when a regular doesn't show. 'I was utterly clueless,' she writes. Encouraged by Sonny, she perseveres and records backing tracks with The Ronettes ('Be My Baby') and The Righteous Brothers (her background tones immortalised on 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling', officially deemed the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century) until ultimately forming her breakthrough Sonny & Cher duo with Bono. 'I Got you Babe' is a smash 1965 hit, but the scope of opportunity for furtherance seems limited. Advised by industry peers to try the London scene, the pair becomes globally famous via headlines upon being refused accommodation at the Hilton Hotel, due to their hippie-chic clothing. This gave them the ultimate global publicity that no hired PR manager could ever have pulled off. Sonny writes Cher's 1967 solo hit 'Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)' as she slowly starts to achieve solo vocal recognition, with her distinctive androgynous contralto voice and exotic semi-Armenian visage (inherited from her biological father), though the pair remain united onstage and off for the time being. A string of the duo's hits followed, peaking with 1967's 'The Beat Goes On', then tapering off in sales as the pair strove to reinvent themselves in this rapidly changing countercultural era, of which they would become historically emblematic. Low dive cabaret gigs would at time keep the wolves from the door, while the pair moved toward their more glamourised '70s TV variety show phase with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour – their touring club act had, by chance and from practical necessity, morphed from pure song rendition to inserting whacky spousal sparring jibes in an attempt to get just any reaction from inimical regional club audiences, some comprising less than a handful, some so untrendy they had never heard of them, and others who saw them as yesterday's news. Ditching their old hippie rags for Bob Mackie's glitzier creations (Cher's at first less revealing at Bono's husbandly insistence), their TV show would evolve, post-divorce, into Cher's own show, Cher (in which she and Mackie were able to use far sexier designs, sans Bono) before the friendly divorcees reunited onscreen for later '70s The Sonny & Cher Show. But this all unfolds later in the memoir, so reader patience is required. Meanwhile, Cher's Swinging Sixties anecdotes, when she first tastes fame, are delicious. There's the two-page much touted one about Cher and Sonny attending Salvadore Dali's NYC art studio, with Sonny's bestie Francis Ford Coppola. Dali is cleaning up after an orgy and Cher picks up a mechanically moving painted rubber fish she finds wedged behind her seat cushion. Thinking it a child's toy, she comments on its beauty, only for Dali to explain it is a vibrator. Dali's assistant, Franco-American artist Ultra Violet, sits alongside Cher. 'She [Ultra Violet] was wearing a man's shirt and tie with a velvet skirt. She sat next to me and, saying nothing, repeatedly tapped my leg with her cane. If she does that again, I thought, I'm going to smack her.' As would be expected, there is much priceless namedropping of idols of the era, e.g. 'Jimi Hendrix's name was added to a long roll call of talented musicians, singers, and industry experts who had died so-called rock-and-roll deaths in the late Sixties. Among them were the angelic Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, and Brian Epstein.' She recalls meeting up-and-coming musicians like Mick Jagger and Dolly Parton, and drolly sets records straight on her disputed relationships. For example, the tabloids 'claimed I was dating Elvis and Robert Redford. Two men I'd never even met, although they'd have made great bookends (insert tongue in cheek).' As industry associates and audiences began noticing Cher to be more the standout talent than Sonny, the once adoring husband becomes increasingly more unfaithful and controlling. In a moment of anger, Sonny spins her around and pushes her against their wall. 'I'd been beaten as a kid,' she writes, 'and I wasn't going to be beaten as an adult. Staring into his eyes, I said, "Let me tell you something. If you ever touch me like this again, I will leave your ass and it'll be the last time you ever see me."' Years later, Cher asks marital advice of Lucille ball, who had ditched ex-husband Desi Arnaz: 'I told her, "Lucy, I want to leave Sonny and you're the only one I know that's ever been in this same situation. What should I do?" 'She told me, "fuck him, you're the one with the talent."' Still more years later Tina Turner, a guest with notoriously abusive husband Ike on Cher's TV show, quietly asks her in a dressing room: 'How did you leave him?' 'I just walked out and kept going,' replies Cher. Meanwhile, amid divorce proceedings, Cher learns how Sonny had made her legally an employee of a company 95% owned by Sonny and 5% by his lawyer, and that she was contracted to work exclusively for that company. Record executive David Geffen, with whom Cher had begun a relationship, helped her escape Sonny's underhand contractual ties. She divulges to the reader: 'There was something inside him that I could never understand, something that took him from being this fabulous, funny guy to being someone who would take everything from me.' But as we all know, Cher is a cool and forgiving soul, and no one spoke more fondly of Sonny Bono than she did after his sudden 1998 death. Whatever the mixed reactions to The Memoir Part 1, and whatever your take on her musical evolution, it's impossible to not like this superstar's frank and courageous dialogue, even if numerous ghostwriters and an editor have transcribed and repeatedly reworded it – Cher herself, has obviously listened to the audiobook and given it her final approval, so it can't be that far removed from her original 'voice' as some have asserted. The Memoir Part 2 may be the great decider, covering more recent pop history, which more readers will have lived through, while moving into Cher's Broadway acting and Oscar-winning movie career. History tells us she will move to New York to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, but skip enrolment after auditioning for and being cast in Robert Altman's Broadway play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. She will win an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, be presented with Kennedy Centre Honour, be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and earn a seemingly endless list of honorary accolades. However, as the Goddess of Pop is known for not overly blowing her own horn ('There are a million people more talented than me who struggle to make it and will never be famous,' she writes, 'I’ve always thought that whether you get a break or not is purely down to luck'), there is rumoured to be some behind-scenes-trepidation of her second instalment ending up in a similar vein to her first – involving more personal trivia than career sensation – for which she has been critiqued. And so, for this next instalment, the most devout Cherists await with bated breath. Meanwhile I, for one, loved this great telling of an exemplary human being and supreme entertainer. Cher is a living inspiration. ...more |
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Apr 25, 2026 12:36AM
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Liza Minnelli is a name synonymous with such a range of topics: From the old Hollywood she was born into as the sole child of director Vincente Minnelli and silver screen star Judy Garland. To being among the entertainment industry's rare EGOT (Emmy, Liza Minnelli is a name synonymous with such a range of topics: From the old Hollywood she was born into as the sole child of director Vincente Minnelli and silver screen star Judy Garland. To being among the entertainment industry's rare EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winners. Her outstanding showmanship that stood tall alongside giants like Charles Aznavour, Chita Rivera and rat pack bros Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. Her globally acclaimed performances from the London Palladium to Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Broadway and Las Vegas. Her fiercely loyal LGBTQI+ following, once fondly nicknamed 'friends of Dorothy', who know her as the 'daughter of Dorothy'. Her run of celebrity marriages, including to gay 'Boy from Oz' Peter Allen. And, of course, her very public struggles with substance use disorder (SUD). Long ago, she strove to step out from the shadow of her legendary mother, Judy Garland. But those days are far behind her as she reaches her eighth decade of life – double what Judy survived before her accidental overdose death in her forties, which is widely believed to have been the final trigger of the 1969 Stonewall riots that gave birth to modern gay rights movement. Thick-skinned yet sensitive, Minnelli has stared down ridicule and contempt for most of her working life, including a string of unkind comedy sketch impersonators, while soaking up adoration as a role model for more positive drag queens. Her closest friends and mentors have included lionised musical duo Kander and Ebb, 'Ol Blue Eyes' Sinatra, late greats Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson, fashion designer Halston and Cabaret movie co-stars Joel Gray and Marisa Berenson. Her godparents were musical royalty Ira Gershwin and Kay Thomson. It seems almost inevitable that some will forever knock her down, while she picks herself up, dusts herself off and starts all over again. Humiliation has inadvertently become part of her persona, an occupational hazard. And while most of the media legacy's reviews of this long-awaited memoir are largely kind, there are those few who cannot help themselves from having a stab. Yes, this book is a collaboration between an entourage including her lifelong best friend Michael Feinstein (musical archivist and interpreter of the Great American Songbook) in conversation with whom she spent twelve years recording this memoir via taped conversations. The cover title clearly includes: 'As told to Michael Feinstein'. Assisting is bestselling author Josh Getlin and Pulitzer Prize winner Heidi Evans. Minnelli's end acknowledgements cover five printed pages, stipulating in no uncertain terms that this book could never have happened without all these people. So why, oh why, must her diehard critics harp on about every little thing they can drum up, from everyday Amazon troll stabs like 'what a downer' to The New York Times critic Alexandra Jacobs calling it: '… more compact and circumspect than Barbra Streisand's My Name Is Barbra and Cher's Cher: The Memoir, Part 1 having been plucked, buffed and powder-puffed within an inch of its long life by Feinstein during the 12-year writing process …' (I had read both of the above memoirs and did not find that negative comparison to be my experience.) Where is the root of this vigilant hatred, we must ask, on reading Liza's book for ourselves? The only possible answers I could think up were: 'its personal', 'it's fashionable' or 'haters gonna hate'. Like, where do these naysayers get their kicks? My own reading of it was done in just over a week of very late nights. Admittedly, I'm a lifelong admirer of her talent and personal resilience. I found parallels between this and veteran Broadway star Lillian Roth's devastating 1954 autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow which was at the time described as a 'brutally frank' depiction of Roth's alcoholism and which, having broken barriers about celebrity addiction, sold over 7 million copies in 20 languages before being adapted into an Oscar-winning 1955 biopic starring Susan Hayward. Roth was, at the time, condemned by the newly formed 12-step recovery system for 'breaking her anonymity', i.e. attracting attention to a name who may well 'bust' (relapse) and so draw disrepute to the 'programme'. She did! And so lived to regret it. Liza's frankness about her recovery journey is clearly aimed at those still suffering from substance abuse disorder (SUD) in the vein of 12-step programmers' well known 'love of one alcoholic for another'. In other words, she aims to use her suffering to help others rise above theirs. What could be kinder, humbler or more well-meant? She crosses privacy boundaries she had never before crossed, while retaining an admirable level of dignity – there are lines she will not cross when it comes to the privacy of others. For this she has been criticised by words like 'circumspect', again by the NYT's Alexandra Jacobs who sarcastically calls Liza 'America’s sequined sweetheart' – I mean, has this critic actually researched her subject? Maybe catty put-downs just attract more clicks. Liza Minnelli's brick-thick tome is a 420-page compelling, revealing, brutally honest self-study. The intended legacy of a great star, herself the end line of great stars. I loved it more than I have many others in its genre in recent years. Her descriptions of a life we can only guess at are vivid. Her honesty is that of one who sees more years behind than ahead of herself. Her integrity glows from the page. Never intended to be some literary achievement, this is the intimate telling of a life the world has wondered about for more than a half-century. Just enjoy and appreciate it. I did. Love you, Liza!!! ...more |
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Apr 02, 2026 08:42PM
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My first reading of this was under force, at school. I loathed it. When I more recently came across it and, for some reason, reread it, I loved it in its entirety. We come to appreciate things, as adults, that we despised as kids. Countless adaptation My first reading of this was under force, at school. I loathed it. When I more recently came across it and, for some reason, reread it, I loved it in its entirety. We come to appreciate things, as adults, that we despised as kids. Countless adaptations have formed four notable films (the most memorable being director William Wyler's Academy Award winning 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon), dozens of TV and radio incarnations, a ballet, three operas and a musical show. Emerald Fennell's 2026 movie was slated by Brontë loyalists, from its 2025 trailer release, for conceptual distortion, casting and design inaccuracies, plus a reported missing second half of Brontë's plot. For those who value authenticity, there's no going past the book: This, Emily Bronte's first and only novel, appeared in 1847 under the nom de plume Ellis Bell, a year before she died aged 30. Her sister Charlotte then edited Wuthering Heights and arranged its posthumous second edition publication in 1850. Its depiction of human cruelty was contentious, challenging Victorian morality ideals, examining religious hypocrisy, social class and gender roles. Central themes are passion, jealousy and vengefulness. Smouldering, swarthy Heathcliff and his great love Catherine and many adversaries are described impeccably by earthy housekeeper Nelly Dean, who I'd so like to have a pot of tea and a natter with. Set on the North Yorkshire Moors between roughly 1771 and 1803, mostly in flashback form, Wuthering Heights is the story's farmhouse setting. Arriving in 1801 to rent nearby Thrushcross Grange, wealthy southern gentleman Mr. Lockwood seeks peace and recuperation. He visits his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, at his remote neighbouring moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is coarsely mannered, his teenaged mistress of the house reserved and their young male servant seemingly some family member. During his visit, Lockwood becomes snowed in at Wuthering Heights. He is reluctantly escorted to a bedchamber, where he finds books and graffiti of one-time inhabitant Catherine. He has a nightmare in which ghostly Catherine attempts entry at the window. Lockwood's cries rouse Heathcliff who arrives at the room. Believing Lockwood, Heathcliff opens the window to let in Catherine's ghost, but nothing happens. Transferring Lockwood to his own bedroom, Heathcliff returns to watch the window. Next morning, after Heathcliff escorts Lockwood back to Thrushcross Grange, housekeeper Nelly Dean recounts to the guest the story of Wuthering Heights' family: Flashback to thirty years before. Then householder Mr. Earnshaw, on a trip to Liverpool, adopts a homeless gypsy boy, brings him home to Wuthering Heights and renames him Heathcliff. Earnshaw's son, Hindley, feels replaced in his father's affections by Heathcliff, turning bitterly jealous. Hindley's sister Catherine befriends Heathcliff, spending hours playing daily with him, out on the moors. Hindley is then packed off to boarding college. Three years on, when Earnshaw dies, Hindley returns as master of Wuthering Heights with his new wife, Frances. He allows Heathcliff to stay but relegates him to servant status. After ambling one day to Thrushcross Grange, spying on the Lintons for fun, Heathcliff and Catherine are caught trespassing. Heathcliff is sent home while Catherine, injured by the Lintons' dog, is taken in to recuperate. Remaining with the Lintons some time, Catherine is affected by their gentility. She returns to Wuthering Heights more refined and scorns Heathcliff's roughness. When the Lintons visit, Heathcliff dresses up to impress Catherine and starts an argument with Edgar Linton. Hindley locks Heathcliff in the attic. Catherine tries comforting Heathcliff, who vows revenge on Hindley. The following year, after having a son, Hareton, Frances dies. The widowed Hindley turns to drink, then moves away for a while. Two years on, when Catherine and Edgar Linton become closer friends and then lovers, she distances herself from Heathcliff. Catherine confides in Nelly that Edgar has proposed and she has accepted, although she loves him less than Heathcliff, whom she can't marry due to his low rank and poor education. She instead hopes to use her position as Edgar's wife to elevate Heathcliff. Eavesdropping into this conversation between Catherine and Nelly, Heathcliff hears Catherine reason that it would 'degrade' her to marry him, though he misses her admission to Nelly her love for him over Edgar. Heathcliff runs away, disappearing without a trace. Distraught, Catherine makes herself ill out of spite. Nursing her to health, Nelly and Edgar soon pander to her every whim to prevent relapse. Three years on, Edgar and Catherine have married and live together at Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff returns, a wealthy gentleman, to Catherine's delight and Edgar's chagrin. Edgar's sister, Isabella, falls for Heathcliff, who encourages her infatuation as a means of revenge. Catherine locks herself in her room, making herself ill again through spite and jealousy. Heathcliff assumes residence at Wuthering Heights, habitually gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. Hindley has to mortgage Heathcliff the farmhouse to pay his gambling dues and debt. When Hindley dies, six months after Catherine, Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights. He elopes with Isabella Linton. When they return some months later, Heathcliff hears of Catherine's illness. With Nelly's aid, he visits her secretly. Catherine's condition turns out to be pregnancy. After giving birth to a daughter, Cathy, Catherine dies. Isabella, pregnant herself, deserts the brutal Heathcliff and flees south, where she gives birth to a son, Linton, before falling ill. She dies and Edgar travels south to retrieve his nephew, Linton, to adopt and educate him. Young Cathy, meanwhile, has become a beautiful, spirited girl. Though usually seldom leaving Thrushcross Grange, she ventures farther afield in her father Edgar's absences. Riding across the moors to Wuthering Heights, she discovers her cousin, Hareton. When her father returns with her other cousin, the weak and sickly Linton, the boy's father Heathcliff prohibits Edgar custody, insisting that Linton live instead at Wuthering Heights. Three years later, on the moors, Nelly and Cathy run into Heathcliff, who takes them to Wuthering Heights to see Linton and Hareton. Heathcliff hopes Linton and Cathy will marry, making Linton heir to Thrushcross Grange. Linton and Cathy begin a secret liaison, echoing that of their respective parents, Heathcliff and Catherine, as youngsters. The following year, after falling ill, Edgar's condition worsens while Nelly and Cathy are out on the moors, where Heathcliff and Linton trick them into entering Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff holds them captive, enforcing Cathy's marriage to Linton. With Linton's help, Cathy then escapes, returning to the Grange where her father dies. As master of Wuthering Heights and now Thrushcross Grange, and as Cathy's father-in-law, Heathcliff insists she leave the Grange and move to Wuthering Heights. Soon after she arrives, Linton dies. Though her young cousin Hareton shows her kindness, Cathy becomes entirely withdrawn. Here, Nelly's long flashback catches up to the present. Lockwood soon tires of the moors, announcing to Heathcliff his departure. Returning to the area by chance, eight months later, with his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange still valid, he lodges there again. Finding Nelly living at Wuthering Heights, he enquires what has happened since he left. She explains that she moved to Wuthering Heights to replace departing housekeeper Zillah. Hareton, after an accident, became confined to the farmhouse. During his convalescence, he and Cathy became close and got engaged. Heathcliff, after seeing visions of Catherine, stopped eating for four days and was found dead in Catherine's old bedchamber. He was buried next to Catherine. Readying to leave, Lockwood passes the graves of Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff. He pauses to contemplate the stillness of the moors. This is Victorian gothic at its finest. Chilly, ghostly, disturbing and ravishingly beautiful literature that will never be successfully emulated - thank goodness. ...more |
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Long ago in Far North Queensland, a tiny exotic girl named Dolores twirled between tamarind trees and on tabletops. She sang as she skipped and whirled in the tropical sunshine, a vocal gift inherited from her opera mother Kay Zammit, a celebrated ra
Long ago in Far North Queensland, a tiny exotic girl named Dolores twirled between tamarind trees and on tabletops. She sang as she skipped and whirled in the tropical sunshine, a vocal gift inherited from her opera mother Kay Zammit, a celebrated radio and Tivoli Circuit soprano. Kay was the eldest of ten offspring of Maltese 'Sugar King' Paul Zammit and his wife Pauline, who had landed on these sunburnt shores with zilch and pioneered a cane sugar industry. Their family had grown such that, for some of their scions' households, cash got tight. But they scraped by without much need of pounds, shillings and pence in this mid-century lucky country. They were tough but rosy times. Cairns, now a major travel destination, was a sleepy hollow without so much as a tourist bureau. Mum Kay had married war veteran Bill Ernst, father of the author Dolores Ernst, eldest of five, who grew up seeking not fame nor fortune and without delusion of grandeur. Just that yearning to stand on a stage and feel the joy of applause. She loved climbing trees, picking avocados, romping in sand with cousins, searching for pearl shells, fishing, catching mud crabs in mangroves and listening to the Bakelite radio. But her passion from the get-go was ballet, from age four. Any Australian showbusiness insider worth their salt knows of this stalwart. Her motto 'happy to be here, easy to work with' has ushered in countless foot lit journeys. At an astonishing 'eighty years young', Dolores Dunbar invokes the might to proffer this charming tome. Penned without literary trickery, her candour and humility strike at the heart. Her anecdotal tenderness cloaks a theatrical behemoth. We embrace her trusty voice with its sprinkle of wry musings. Dolores. Here is her tale: After a strict yet blissful Catholic girlhood, her grownup action kicks off at the dawn of '60s. Word is out that country music legend Slim Dusty needs a girl to sing and dance in his roadshow, doubling as a magician's 'boom ching girl' alongside a rope-spinning cowgirl and bikini-clad juggler. Teenage Dolores is up for this, anything for a foot in the door to her dream. And bravo, she gets the gig. Hence the title '18 Months of One Night Stands'. So ensues a muddy 18-month convoy. Through outback bush tracks, backwoods and boondocks beyond the proverbial black stump. Townships with no building in sight. Their loyal audiences comprise cattlemen, miners, barefoot desert folk squatting on floors with suckling babies and nary a word of English. Parched of entertainment in dusty one-horse-towns without so much as a communal TV, mobs hear via bush telegraph and show up in droves, waving 20-pound notes at the window when booked out. Some even muck in. Galvanised iron venues with bare earth floors. Stages strung from painter's planks across 44-gallon drums. 100-watt bulbs as overheads. Old halls. Amp leads crossing streets from ramshackle pubs. Torch-shining crowds. Spot the loo if you can. Showbiz apprenticeship in all its stark glory. We feel their enterprise, sweat and camaraderie. The remoteness of a wide brown land at the end of the earth, before mass global travel or imponderables like internet or smartphones. This isolation simmers in Dunbar's subtext, aglow with nostalgia and no hint of grievance. Post-tour and braving the city smoke, she does 'those' humdrum jobs in this quest for the footlights. 'Paying one's dues', biding her time, eyeing what chances arise. In a doctor's office. The handkerchief section at McWhirters store in Brisbane. Sportswear at Bolands in Cairns. Does shows with Cairns Choral Society. Tries varying posts, feeling misplaced here and there. But tenacity is paramount. It's the end goal that counts. Ambitious if homesick, she settles on a commission desk placement in the hairdressing salon of Sydney's Farmers department store. A kindly supervisor's social connections lead to formal singing lessons from famed contralto Evelyn Hall de Izal, which in turn lands an audition for fabled producers J.C. Williamson's, known as The Firm or J.C.W. Her first musical is in the ensemble of Funny Girl at Sydney's ornate old Theatre Royal. She discovers the not so ornate cold, grubby dressing rooms and bathrooms of the era. Dolores cuts her teeth and earns her stripes the way it was done then. Show boys drill her on greasepaint, eyelash glue and where to pin hairpieces. The hoofer sisterhood helps too. Funny Girl runs forever, moving to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. At Her Majesty's Melbourne, as their companies co-dine between shows, she meets fellow Queenslander Rod Dunbar from Oliver! across the road at the Comedy Theatre. All of pop and TV know this handsome ex rock singer, a onetime regular on Channel Seven’s Sing Sing Sing. Expanding into musical theatre, Rod is already in principal roles. They marry and stay together for life, until Rod dies aged 77, meanwhile welcoming a beautiful son into the world. Both manage solo careers some of the time. Dolores appears sans hubby in My Fair Lady, Applause, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Les Miserables. In her widowed 70s she joins a luminary line-up in musical comedy Half Time at Sydney's Hayes Theatre alongside the venue's eponymous star Nancye Hayes herself. She portrays everything from a Ziegfield Bride to a mouse. Crones, whores, Disney creatures, Litle Miss Sunshine, Wonder Woman, a Fairy Godmother. She choreographs shows and events, takes on Company Management posts, the lot. But the duo also becomes known as a team early on, appearing in shows together. Even before marrying, they are in Fiddler on the Roof, Dolores as daughter Tzeitel and Rod as The Fiddler. They reunite in Godspell, with Rod as Jesus. In Chicago Rod is MC, Dolores merry murderess Mona (Lipshitz). They become Johnny O'Keefe's parents in a tour of Shout. In Bye Bye Birdie they team up as Mayor and Mayor's Wife. This tradition helps them through a life few theatrical marriages survive. But true love is their bond. And just when you think this old hand may retire, she embarks on a quarter-century encore career teaching Dance and Musical Theatre at the McDonald College of Performing Arts, directing extravaganzas like Copacabana, Grease and Fame. In this 'giving back' incarnation, her passion and energy drive future talents. She takes student groups to the USA to perform, join classes and see hit shows of Broadway, LA and Vegas – even to China! And not just once or twice. She pioneers this McDonald custom that lives on in her wake. Then she gets to work on this book. She outlines highpoints, hallowed theatres and sellouts. Marvels at the stars, directors, designers and choreographers she's known. And drolly dismisses the less-than-kind ones. The torrent of names along this Australian journey is eye-popping. Greats like Jill Perryman, Gloria Dawn, Bobby Limb and Dawn Lake, Betty Pounder, Toni Lamond, Bruce Barry, June Bronhill, Hayes Gordon, even Hollywood favourite Eve Arden. Others are Lorraine Bayly, Normie Rowe, Jeanne Little, Richard Wherrett, Judi Connelli, Roger Kirk, Colette Mann, John Waters, Donna Lee, Ross Coleman . . . Well sure, headliners may put bums on seats, but there would be no show without the all-dependable, ever-reliable trouper. Keeping things real, the author peeps into those lesser ventures vital to most thespians: cruise ships, cabaret hecklers, bawdy theatre restaurants. Wherever there's a buck to keep the wolves from the door. Graft that the theatregoing hoi polloi seldom hear of, and the soulless sniff at from their 9-5 abyss. The madness, slog, frantic tours, fluffed lines, dodgy scenery, missed cues, last minute stand-ins, stages the size of stamps. Theatre digs, from the dubious to the idyllic. Career hiccups, injuries, bomb scares, fires and flops. Some catastrophic, others plain farcical. All part of the merry-go-round. Guessing what zenith waits round the next corner. History is marked by where she performs on events like the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Six-Day-War and Australia's Whitlam Dismissal. This astonishing soul then shares secrets and tips to aspirants and aficionados, those who crave the Razzle Dazzle, those seeking inspiration whatever their dream, and we who just love an enchanting memoir. Here's the crucial yarn of one who never sought acclaim but was just there. A formidable legacy. Look at that cover, check the blazing smile. Showbiz personified. A raconteuse extraordinaire. If only there were more Dolores Dunbars. 100% must read for all humans. ...more |
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C.S. Burrough
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This not being the first Deborah Devonshire née Mitford book I had read (I loved Wait for Me! too), I knew I would like it. Because, despite her humility and self-deprecating humour, this youngest Mitford sister, having reached the highest rank of th
This not being the first Deborah Devonshire née Mitford book I had read (I loved Wait for Me! too), I knew I would like it. Because, despite her humility and self-deprecating humour, this youngest Mitford sister, having reached the highest rank of them all, was of fine intellect and simple charm. She was always quick to point out how eldest sister and arch-tease Nancy Mitford joked of Deborah never exceeding the sophistication of a nine-year-old (even nicknaming her '9'). This was about Deborah's young spirit and unaffectedness. Famously well adjusted, she treated everyone the same, from royalty to pop star to servant. Yet being a Mitford, Deborah was hardly conventional and drew from an extraordinary life in her many books. She grew up inventing the secret language 'Honnish' with next older sister Jessica Mitford, stowed away in an airing cupboard they called the 'Hons Cupboard', hidden away from adults in their father's drafty old Oxfordshire mansion inherited by her father, the 2nd Baron Redesdale. Mostly home educated by governesses, from age 6 Deborah had a passion for chickens which stayed with her for life, becoming, amongst endless other things, a connoisseur of fine poultry, hence this book's title. She was also a keen horse rider and a talented ice skater, reaching professional levels but not taking it up due to lack of parental approval. After her presentation at court as a debutante, Deborah fell in love with and was betrothed to Lord Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. They married in 1941. By the end of the WWII Deborah had lost two babies, her only brother Tom, four best friends and two brothers-in-law. She still had her famous big sisters though: the Fascist, the Communist, the Nazi, the novelist (and stud farmer Pam). Her husband Andrew now became heir to his father's Dukedom. In her years as Duchess of Devonshire she discovered a necessary talent for stately home restoration, learning on the job with her magnificent 16th-century mansion Chatsworth House, which her husband the duke inherited with a tax bill of nearly $20 million in the post-WWII years. Their only way of keeping Chatsworth was to restore and open it up to the public to pay for itself. They sold artworks, land and iconic historic buildings like Hardwick Hall to pay taxes of 80 percent of the estate’s value: around $300 million in today’s money. Deborah's transformation turned it into a self-sustaining family business. They managed to retain Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and the Lismore Castle estate in Ireland, both having been in the Cavendish family for centuries, Lismore Castle once home to Fred Astaire's sister Adele, wife of Lord Charles Cavendish (Deborah's great uncle-in-law). As Châtelaine, Deborah entertained world leaders at Chatsworth, her husband serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations from 1960 to 1962, Minister of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office from 1962 to 1963, and for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964. She received JFK and brother Bobby, to whom she was related by their sister Kathleen's marriage to Deborah's brother-in-law William (Kathleen and William died tragically young, with Kathleen buried with many Dukes of Devonshire in St Peter's Church, Edensor on the Devonshire family estate). Indeed she was JFK's personal guest at his 1961 presidential inauguration and, more sadly, an attendee his 1963 memorial service. In the late 1950s and '60s it was not unheard of for the Queen Mother to invite Deborah to some event or other. Queen Elizabeth II herself had tea at Chatsworth. The then dazzling Princess Margaret's Chatsworth visits attracted other VIPs, movie stars such as Gary Cooper, literati figures like Evelyn Waugh (really an old friend of sisters Nancy and Diana), between which Deborah hobnobbed with the world's jet set, oversaw 35,000 acres of gardening, tended her famous hens and generally got her hands dirty. She wrote fascinating books, many about Chatsworth and her work there (she was even known to man the ticket office herself). Her Chatsworth books include Chatsworth: The House (1980), Farm Animals: Based on the Farmyard at Chatsworth (1991), Treasures of Chatsworth: A Private View (1991), Chatsworth Garden (1999) and Round About Chatsworth (2005). Yet she remained the down-to-earth country girl who adored her many animals, kept on speaking terms with all her Mitford sisters even when the others were at loggerheads. Deborah never got into those Mitford feuds and fallouts. 'Their politics were nothing to do with me,' she said. She was perhaps the happiest and most grounded Mitford sister, despite her marked social elevation that set her somehow apart from her older siblings, having enjoyed a comparatively untroubled childhood then a stable lifelong marriage. Though minus that glaring Mitford rebellious streak, Deborah shared their sharp minds, penmanship skills, droll humour and regal 'Mitfordese' drawl ('Do admit!' 'Do tell!' 'Please picture!'). It was Deborah herself who as a girl started 'Do admit'. Yet simplistic in so many ways. Lucian Freud, who painted her several times, was a close friend. 'I see him when I go to London and I leave him eggs on the doorstep,' she said in an interview. 'He seems to like that. I really love him and I always have.' Her candid patter of In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor shows her capacity to chew the fat with a famous polyglot as if over beer and peanuts. Just as her dotty banter in The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters betrays an endearing almost vagueness, yet a deep personal loyalty. She is clearly the 'nice' one, with whom one would feel safest at a state banquet, country pig fair or couture salon hop. She was an ardent Elvis Presley fan. Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, in 2007, she recounted having tea with Hitler on a visit to Munich in 1937 with her mother and sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and therefore carrying on the entire conversation with Hitler. The Telegraph interviewer asked who Deborah would have preferred tea with: Elvis or Hitler. With astonishment she answered: 'Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question.' Being the youngest Mitford, Deborah outlived the others and indeed her husband the duke, becoming Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004, having been appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II for her service to the Royal Collection Trust. She died aged 94 in 2014, survived by three of seven children, eight grandchildren (including fashion model Stella Tennant, whose Vogue Chatsworth shoot Deborah writes of in this book) and eighteen great-grandchildren. Her funeral at St Peter's Church, Edensor, was attended by family, friends, six hundred staff and the (then) Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. Her anecdotes and ponderings in this slim volume are a heartwarming treat, written as if she's perched on the end of your bed, an old, old Dowager Duchess, telling you a few wise tales. 'When you are very old,' she once said, 'you accept what has happened. You cry over some things, but not a lot. It's too distant.' Pure pleasure. ...more |
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'I also think a volume of letters will have to wait until everyone's dead, don't you, because of hurt feelings?' Diana to Deborah, 17 August 1980. Such was this potential 834 page can of worms, comprising just an estimated five per cent of the sisters 'I also think a volume of letters will have to wait until everyone's dead, don't you, because of hurt feelings?' Diana to Deborah, 17 August 1980. Such was this potential 834 page can of worms, comprising just an estimated five per cent of the sisters' letters, yet effectively telling six interrelated life stories: the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles (Sydney's father founded English Vanity Fair and The Lady magazines, employing son-in-law David to manage The Lady). The Mitford saga lends credence to the adage 'truth is stranger than fiction'. You couldn't invent such tales. Hardly a week went by in the 1930s without one of this sextet making headlines. The opening letters, from 24 July 1925, show the interwar halcyon years, the English country lives of the Mitford girls. Mainly home-educated by governesses, most are well read thanks to their grandfather Algernon Freeman-Mitford's legacy which included a stately family library. Debutante of 1922 and Bright Young Thing Nancy is 20, flitting to and from her London and Oxford social scenes. Pamela is 17, Diana 15, Unity 10 and Jessica 7. Little Deborah is just 2, her first letters not appearing here until she approaches her tenth birthday in 1930. To subsidise her father's tight allowance, Nancy starts writing, encouraged by literary amigo Evelyn Waugh. Initially uncredited in society gossip columns, she then sells signed articles, until in 1930 The Lady gives her a regular column (presumably helped by family connections). She soon attempts novels, basing characters on relatives, friends and acquaintances. If Nancy's literary enterprise is a gamble, her love life is a fiasco. She is soon ditched after a futile lengthy engagement to effeminate gay aesthete Hamish St Clair Erskine, four years her junior, second son of the 5th Earl of Rosslyn and ex-lover of her brother Tom. On the rebound, she is engaged to erratic Peter Rodd, second son of Sir Rennell Rodd the soon-to-be ennobled Baron Rennell. The marriage will become largely a sham. But Nancy's exploits are eclipsed by the younger Diana, who in 1929 wins over her naysaying parents and marries brewing heir Bryan Guinness who will inherit the barony of Moyne. Such a great society beauty is she that family friend James Lees-Milne calls her 'the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen'. Evelyn Waugh dedicates his novel Vile Bodies, a satire of the Roaring Twenties, to Diana and Bryan. Her portrait gets painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb. Diana triggers scandal in 1932 by leaving her husband for British Union of Fascists (BUF) head Sir Oswald Mosley. As Mosley does not intend leaving his wife 'Cimmie' (Lady Cynthia Curzon, daughter of Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India) Diana lives in a flat as his mistress, until in 1933 Cimmie dies of peritonitis. With Unity along for the ride, Diana then ingratiates herself with Adolph Hitler's circle on Mosley's covert bidding for a commercial radio station on German soil to fund Mosley's BUF. In 1936 Diana and Mosley secretly marry in Joseph Goebbels' Berlin house, with Hitler a guest. Unity is meanwhile swept away, a Hitler devotee and Third Reich fanatic, basing herself in Germany much of the time. In 1937 teenage Jessica, the 'red sheep' of the family, having long saved to run away, elopes to Spain with second cousin Esmond Romilly, Communist nephew of Winston S Churchill. Romilly finds work reporting for the News Chronicle and, after legal obstacles caused by their parents' opposition, they marry and move to London, in the poor industrial East End. On 20 December 1937 Jessica has a baby, Julia, who dies the following May in a measles epidemic. In 1939 Jessica and Esmond emigrate to the USA. When WWII starts Esmond enlists in the Royal Canadian Air Force, leaving Jessica in Washington D.C. carrying another daughter, Constancia. After a bombing raid over Germany, Esmond goes missing in action on 30 November 1941. Nancy meanwhile discovers in the summer of 1938 she is pregnant but miscarries. In early 1939 she joins her husband Peter Rodd in the South of France as a relief worker, assisting Spanish refugees fleeing Franco's armies in the civil war. Soon afterwards Rodd, commissioned into the Welsh Guards, departs overseas and Nancy, back in London, has her second miscarriage. The early war years are gruelling for all, except maybe Pamela who always took life in her stride. She has married the brilliant 'rampantly bisexual' scientist and heir to the News of the World Derek Jackson (becoming the second of Jackson's six wives). From around now too, relations between Jessica and Diana permanently freeze, their political rift so deep it becomes personal. On 29 June 1940 Diana, prised from eleven week old Max Mosley, is interned without charge in Holloway Prison under Defence Regulation 18b, a dangerous person to the state, tagged 'England's most hated woman'. With Mosley already interned separately in Brixton Prison, Diana pines for her husband and four sons (two from each marriage). The couple reunite in Holloway in December 1941, lodged in a flat on prison grounds, thanks to Mitford cousin-in-law Prime Minister Winston S Churchill. Both are released in November 1943, on grounds of Mosley's ill health, and placed under house arrest until war's end at Mosley's Crux Easton property in Berkshire. Nancy's first four published novels, satirical farces, have seen no great acclaim. Her husband fights overseas. She does war work in London's blitz, first as an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) driver. Then at a Paddington casualty depot, writing with indelible pencil on the foreheads of the dead and dying. Then in a canteen for French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk. Also helping refugees billeted at her parents' London house in Rutland Gate, requisitioned to accommodate Polish Jews evacuated from Whitechapel. An affair with Free French officer André Roy results in a third pregnancy. Nancy again miscarries, with complications leading to a hysterectomy in November 1941. Convalescing, at a loose end she works as an assistant at Heywood Hill's Mayfair bookshop and literati hangout, becoming the shop's social nucleus. Unable to reconcile with war, Unity publicly shoots herself in the head at Munich's Englischer Garten. She survives with bullet lodged in brain. Hospitalised unconscious in Munich for weeks with Hitler suppressing news coverage, she is 'missing' to her family in England. After two months her parents Lord and Lady Redesdale hear from a clinic in neutral Switzerland, where Hitler has had her sent. Transporting Unity home by ambulance, Lady Redesdale becomes her carer. Permanently impaired with a mental age of twelve, Unity is volatile and incontinent. This compounds the stress on the Redesdales' marriage, caused by political differences. They permanently separate. Deborah at first helps with Unity, then after marrying in 1941 roams England following in-training Cold Stream Guards husband Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. By war's end she has lost two babies, her only brother Tom, four best friends and two brothers-in-law. Her husband has unexpectedly become heir to his father's dukedom. The post war years I found the most gripping. Unity dies aged 33 from her lingering gunshot wound. Nancy enjoys a literary breakthrough with The Pursuit of Love, gives up on her unhappy marriage and moves to Paris to be near new love of her life, Charles de Gaulle's right hand man Gaston Palewski. Bedecking herself in haute couture she becomes an ardent Francophile, nicknamed by her sisters the 'French Lady Writer'. Diana and Mosley, social pariahs through their politics, move to France near to Nancy, becoming friends and neighbours of fellow pariahs the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the abdicated King Edward VIII and twice divorced Wallis Simpson, whom he has married). The 1950s are for me the centrepiece of this epic, with the sisters at their peaks. Nancy's writing career soars while her adoration of Palewski is never fully reciprocated, their coupling never formalised. His diplomatic career and other romances leave Nancy in the shadows, over years their relationship trickling to naught. Nancy's acerbic wit, irresistibly funny, shields a tortured woman. Unrequited love, loneliness and sisterly jealousy are thought her underlying issues. She also reveals having felt unloved by her mother (a complaint shared by none of her sisters). Deborah has become Duchess of Devonshire, soon-to-be hostess of royalty and world leaders (she is also related to the Kennedys by marriage). She administers historic Chatsworth House, her husband's 35,000-acre family seat which was institutionalised for WWII. Planning to move in, she oversees its colossal restoration. She is also Châtelaine of Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and the Lismore Castle estate in Ireland. She involves herself in local charities and functions, supervises staff, shares her husband's interest in thoroughbred racehorses and breeds Shetland ponies. Jessica, war-widowed and remarried, could not be more different. Renouncing her gentrified roots, she is a naturalised American and Communist Party USA member, living in Oakland, California. In her 10 November 1951 letter to Deborah, who contemplates visiting, Jessica writes: 'We lead an extremely non-duchessy life here. For instance, if you want to stay with us you would have to sleep on a couch in the dining room, we don't have a spare room here ...' Jessica becomes an American civil rights figure and bestselling author as celebrated as Nancy. The older of her two little boys, Nicholas, is killed in 1955 when hit by a bus. She never speaks of it. Mellowing, she resigns from the Communist Party in 1958. Pamela, teased fondly by her sisters who nickname her 'Woman', shuns world affairs and keeps to country life. This is reflected in Poet Laureate John Betjeman's unpublished poem The Mitford Girls, ending with a line about his favourite: 'Miss Pamela, most rural of them all'. Living variously in England, Ireland and Switzerland, she is the least active correspondent (perhaps mildly dyslexic, notes the editor), yet deliciously dotty. Divorced with huge settlement, she sets up home with an Italian horsewoman, her life companion. Never remarrying, she is thought to have become 'a you-know-what-bian' as Jessica writes to her husband in 1955 when first visiting Europe with her American family. The sisters' frail old father Lord Redesdale dies in 1958. His estranged wife, their mother, soon follows. As the seasons turn we witness the inevitable peaks and troughs, stumbling across some heartrending tragedy, fabulous triumph or side-splitting gem. Take for instance Nancy's shriek-worthy nickname 'Pygmy-Peep-a-toes' for five-foot two-inch Princess Margaret, who is constantly in the headlines over her affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend and whose open-toed shoes Nancy thinks vulgar. Or Deborah's nickname 'Cake' for the Queen Mother, given after a wedding where, on hearing the bride and groom are about to cut the cake, QM exclaims 'Oh, the cake!' as if having never seen it happen before. Their drollery and regal 'Mitfordese' drawl recurs throughout ('Do admit!' 'Do tell!' 'Please picture!') As the 1960s and '70s unfold we see the sisters age and face social revolution, while old grievances to one another fester. These include: whether Jessica's memoir Hons and Rebels invents episodes of their growing up years to match Nancy's fictionalised versions in The Pursuit of Love; whether their brother Tom, killed in WWII, was a Communist supporter, Nazi sympathiser or neither; and Nancy's spitefulness. Diana, Deborah and Jessica become grandmothers (one of Jessica's two African American grandsons will later become legal scholar and Professor of Law at Yale James Forman Jr.). In 1972 Nancy, in poor health, is made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). She is soon diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, dying on 30 June 1973 at home in France and cremated, her ashes buried in England alongside sister Unity. We now witness the remaining sisters forwarding each other's letters when ganging up against each other beneath the smiling repartee. Later ones, after Nancy's agonising death, betray simmering resentments towards her and Jessica, the two who forged independent careers rather than leaning on marriage for wealth. This backstabbing of the self-made two is by the most privileged two, Diana and Deborah, though Deborah is more Diana's sounding board for the most part. As the only sister to remain consistently on speaking terms with all the others, Deborah is the natural mediator, though this becomes harder as her husband battles alcoholism. As they further mature, we see their growth, especially of Diana (once 'England's most hated woman'), essentially so kind yet understandably tortured in rare moments. In exile with Mosley, she has time to ponder, more so after his 1980 death. She suffers from deafness. She writes prolifically, memoirs, biographies, book reviews, translations and commentaries on her heyday, ever remorseless of her pre-war connexions. In A Life of Contrasts: An Autobiography she reiterates, 'I didn't love Hitler any more than I did Winston [Churchill]. I can't regret it, it was so interesting.' Only years after Nancy's death will Diana learn from released classified files of Nancy's treacherous role in her wartime internment. Nancy had 'informed' British Intelligence agency MI5 that Diana was 'a ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted fascist and admirer of Hitler [who] sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy in general.' She had later made official behind-scenes noises to prevent Diana's release. Though Jessica had also (from America) lobbied against Diana and Mosley's release, she had not later feigned amity, unlike neighbourly Nancy whom Diana had devotedly supported through her protracted terminal illness. Towards the close of the 20th century two more sisters leave us. Pamela, hospitalised after a fall, dies in London on 12 April 1994. Jessica dies in the USA of lung cancer, aged 78, on 22 July 1996, her ashes scattered at sea. She is survived by her widower and two of her four children. Her deep rift with Diana is never healed, their only brief contact having been while politely visiting the dying Nancy. The voices taper down to Diana and Deborah, the only two left in the new millennium. The last published letter, from Deborah to Diana, is dated 5 January 2002. When Diana dies in Paris in 2003, leaving no sisters for Deborah to exchange letters with, there's a poignancy finishing this enormous book. Diana was described in a Daily Telegraph (16 August 2003) editorial, after her death, as an 'unrepentant Nazi and effortlessly charming.' According to her Daily Telegraph obituary, a diamond swastika was among her jewels. She was survived by four sons: author Desmond Guinness; Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne; Alexander and Max Mosley. Her stepson, novelist Nicholas Mosley, wrote a critical memoir of his father for which Diana never forgave him. Two of Diana's grandchildren, Daphne and Tom Guinness, and her great-granddaughter Jasmine Guinness, became models. Deborah lived eleven more years, producing published works from memoir to gardening to cookbooks, a whole series on Chatsworth House. Made a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) for her service to the Royal Collection Trust, she died widowed on 24 September 2014, aged 94. Her funeral was attended by family and friends, six hundred staff and the (then) Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. She is survived by three of seven children, eight grandchildren (including model Stella Tennant) and eighteen great-grandchildren. We cannot pity this youngest, longest living and most advantaged sister, who had such a good innings, yet she comes off as the stalwart figure of the piece and enormously likeable. Charlotte Mosley's masterful editing and footnoting is a work of art, her generous chapter introductions setting the scene for each period. There's an indispensable index of nicknames, of which the Mitfords had so many, plus a helpful family tree and scholarly rear index. One must concur with J.K. Rowling's comment on the front cover: 'The story of the Mitford sisters has never been told as well as they tell it themselves.' This is the ultimate Mitford fan ride. ...more |
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This not being the first Deborah Devonshire née Mitford book I had read (I loved Wait for Me! too), I knew I would like it. Because, despite her humility and self-deprecating humour, this youngest Mitford sister, having reached the highest rank of th
This not being the first Deborah Devonshire née Mitford book I had read (I loved Wait for Me! too), I knew I would like it. Because, despite her humility and self-deprecating humour, this youngest Mitford sister, having reached the highest rank of them all, was of fine intellect and simple charm. She was always quick to point out how eldest sister and arch-tease Nancy Mitford joked of Deborah never exceeding the sophistication of a nine-year-old (even nicknaming her '9'). This was about Deborah's young spirit and unaffectedness. Famously well adjusted, she treated everyone the same, from royalty to pop star to servant. Yet being a Mitford, Deborah was hardly conventional and drew from an extraordinary life in her many books. She grew up inventing the secret language 'Honnish' with next older sister Jessica Mitford, stowed away in an airing cupboard they called the 'Hons Cupboard', hidden away from adults in their father's drafty old Oxfordshire mansion inherited by her father, the 2nd Baron Redesdale. Mostly home educated by governesses, from age 6 Deborah had a passion for chickens which stayed with her for life, becoming, amongst endless other things, a connoisseur of fine poultry, hence this book's title. She was also a keen horse rider and a talented ice skater, reaching professional levels but not taking it up due to lack of parental approval. After her presentation at court as a debutante, Deborah fell in love with and was betrothed to Lord Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. They married in 1941. By the end of the WWII Deborah had lost two babies, her only brother Tom, four best friends and two brothers-in-law. She still had her famous big sisters though: the Fascist, the Communist, the Nazi, the novelist (and stud farmer Pam). Her husband Andrew now became heir to his father's Dukedom. In her years as Duchess of Devonshire she discovered a necessary talent for stately home restoration, learning on the job with her magnificent 16th-century mansion Chatsworth House, which her husband the duke inherited with a tax bill of nearly $20 million in the post-WWII years. Their only way of keeping Chatsworth was to restore and open it up to the public to pay for itself. They sold artworks, land and iconic historic buildings like Hardwick Hall to pay taxes of 80 percent of the estate’s value: around $300 million in today’s money. Deborah's transformation turned it into a self-sustaining family business. They managed to retain Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and the Lismore Castle estate in Ireland, both having been in the Cavendish family for centuries, Lismore Castle once home to Fred Astaire's sister Adele, wife of Lord Charles Cavendish (Deborah's great uncle-in-law). As Châtelaine, Deborah entertained world leaders at Chatsworth, her husband serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations from 1960 to 1962, Minister of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office from 1962 to 1963, and for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964. She received JFK and brother Bobby, to whom she was related by their sister Kathleen's marriage to Deborah's brother-in-law William (Kathleen and William died tragically young, with Kathleen buried with many Dukes of Devonshire in St Peter's Church, Edensor on the Devonshire family estate). Indeed she was JFK's personal guest at his 1961 presidential inauguration and, more sadly, an attendee his 1963 memorial service. In the late 1950s and '60s it was not unheard of for the Queen Mother to invite Deborah to some event or other. Queen Elizabeth II herself had tea at Chatsworth. The then dazzling Princess Margaret's Chatsworth visits attracted other VIPs, movie stars such as Gary Cooper, literati figures like Evelyn Waugh (really an old friend of sisters Nancy and Diana), between which Deborah hobnobbed with the world's jet set, oversaw 35,000 acres of gardening, tended her famous hens and generally got her hands dirty. She wrote fascinating books, many about Chatsworth and her work there (she was even known to man the ticket office herself). Her Chatsworth books include Chatsworth: The House (1980), Farm Animals: Based on the Farmyard at Chatsworth (1991), Treasures of Chatsworth: A Private View (1991), Chatsworth Garden (1999) and Round About Chatsworth (2005). Yet she remained the down-to-earth country girl who adored her many animals, kept on speaking terms with all her Mitford sisters even when the others were at loggerheads. Deborah never got into those Mitford feuds and fallouts. 'Their politics were nothing to do with me,' she said. She was perhaps the happiest and most grounded Mitford sister, despite her marked social elevation that set her somehow apart from her older siblings, having enjoyed a comparatively untroubled childhood then a stable lifelong marriage. Though minus that glaring Mitford rebellious streak, Deborah shared their sharp minds, penmanship skills, droll humour and regal 'Mitfordese' drawl ('Do admit!' 'Do tell!' 'Please picture!'). It was Deborah herself who as a girl started 'Do admit'. Yet simplistic in so many ways. Lucian Freud, who painted her several times, was a close friend. 'I see him when I go to London and I leave him eggs on the doorstep,' she said in an interview. 'He seems to like that. I really love him and I always have.' Her candid patter of In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor shows her capacity to chew the fat with a famous polyglot as if over beer and peanuts. Just as her dotty banter in The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters betrays an endearing almost vagueness, yet a deep personal loyalty. She is clearly the 'nice' one, with whom one would feel safest at a state banquet, country pig fair or couture salon hop. She was an ardent Elvis Presley fan. Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, in 2007, she recounted having tea with Hitler on a visit to Munich in 1937 with her mother and sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and therefore carrying on the entire conversation with Hitler. The Telegraph interviewer asked who Deborah would have preferred tea with: Elvis or Hitler. With astonishment she answered: 'Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question.' Being the youngest Mitford, Deborah outlived the others and indeed her husband the duke, becoming Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004, having been appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II for her service to the Royal Collection Trust. She died aged 94 in 2014, survived by three of seven children, eight grandchildren (including fashion model Stella Tennant, whose Vogue Chatsworth shoot Deborah writes of in this book) and eighteen great-grandchildren. Her funeral at St Peter's Church, Edensor, was attended by family, friends, six hundred staff and the (then) Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. Her anecdotes and ponderings in this slim volume are a heartwarming treat, written as if she's perched on the end of your bed, an old, old Dowager Duchess, telling you a few wise tales. 'When you are very old,' she once said, 'you accept what has happened. You cry over some things, but not a lot. It's too distant.' Pure pleasure. ...more |
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C.S. Burrough
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Long ago in Far North Queensland, a tiny exotic girl named Dolores twirled between tamarind trees and on tabletops. She sang as she skipped and whirled in the tropical sunshine, a vocal gift inherited from her opera mother Kay Zammit, a celebrated ra
Long ago in Far North Queensland, a tiny exotic girl named Dolores twirled between tamarind trees and on tabletops. She sang as she skipped and whirled in the tropical sunshine, a vocal gift inherited from her opera mother Kay Zammit, a celebrated radio and Tivoli Circuit soprano. Kay was the eldest of ten offspring of Maltese 'Sugar King' Paul Zammit and his wife Pauline, who had landed on these sunburnt shores with zilch and pioneered a cane sugar industry. Their family had grown such that, for some of their scions' households, cash got tight. But they scraped by without much need of pounds, shillings and pence in this mid-century lucky country. They were tough but rosy times. Cairns, now a major travel destination, was a sleepy hollow without so much as a tourist bureau. Mum Kay had married war veteran Bill Ernst, father of the author Dolores Ernst, eldest of five, who grew up seeking not fame nor fortune and without delusion of grandeur. Just that yearning to stand on a stage and feel the joy of applause. She loved climbing trees, picking avocados, romping in sand with cousins, searching for pearl shells, fishing, catching mud crabs in mangroves and listening to the Bakelite radio. But her passion from the get-go was ballet, from age four. Any Australian showbusiness insider worth their salt knows of this stalwart. Her motto 'happy to be here, easy to work with' has ushered in countless foot lit journeys. At an astonishing 'eighty years young', Dolores Dunbar invokes the might to proffer this charming tome. Penned without literary trickery, her candour and humility strike at the heart. Her anecdotal tenderness cloaks a theatrical behemoth. We embrace her trusty voice with its sprinkle of wry musings. Dolores. Here is her tale: After a strict yet blissful Catholic girlhood, her grownup action kicks off at the dawn of '60s. Word is out that country music legend Slim Dusty needs a girl to sing and dance in his roadshow, doubling as a magician's 'boom ching girl' alongside a rope-spinning cowgirl and bikini-clad juggler. Teenage Dolores is up for this, anything for a foot in the door to her dream. And bravo, she gets the gig. Hence the title '18 Months of One Night Stands'. So ensues a muddy 18-month convoy. Through outback bush tracks, backwoods and boondocks beyond the proverbial black stump. Townships with no building in sight. Their loyal audiences comprise cattlemen, miners, barefoot desert folk squatting on floors with suckling babies and nary a word of English. Parched of entertainment in dusty one-horse-towns without so much as a communal TV, mobs hear via bush telegraph and show up in droves, waving 20-pound notes at the window when booked out. Some even muck in. Galvanised iron venues with bare earth floors. Stages strung from painter's planks across 44-gallon drums. 100-watt bulbs as overheads. Old halls. Amp leads crossing streets from ramshackle pubs. Torch-shining crowds. Spot the loo if you can. Showbiz apprenticeship in all its stark glory. We feel their enterprise, sweat and camaraderie. The remoteness of a wide brown land at the end of the earth, before mass global travel or imponderables like internet or smartphones. This isolation simmers in Dunbar's subtext, aglow with nostalgia and no hint of grievance. Post-tour and braving the city smoke, she does 'those' humdrum jobs in this quest for the footlights. 'Paying one's dues', biding her time, eyeing what chances arise. In a doctor's office. The handkerchief section at McWhirters store in Brisbane. Sportswear at Bolands in Cairns. Does shows with Cairns Choral Society. Tries varying posts, feeling misplaced here and there. But tenacity is paramount. It's the end goal that counts. Ambitious if homesick, she settles on a commission desk placement in the hairdressing salon of Sydney's Farmers department store. A kindly supervisor's social connections lead to formal singing lessons from famed contralto Evelyn Hall de Izal, which in turn lands an audition for fabled producers J.C. Williamson's, known as The Firm or J.C.W. Her first musical is in the ensemble of Funny Girl at Sydney's ornate old Theatre Royal. She discovers the not so ornate cold, grubby dressing rooms and bathrooms of the era. Dolores cuts her teeth and earns her stripes the way it was done then. Show boys drill her on greasepaint, eyelash glue and where to pin hairpieces. The hoofer sisterhood helps too. Funny Girl runs forever, moving to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. At Her Majesty's Melbourne, as their companies co-dine between shows, she meets fellow Queenslander Rod Dunbar from Oliver! across the road at the Comedy Theatre. All of pop and TV know this handsome ex rock singer, a onetime regular on Channel Seven’s Sing Sing Sing. Expanding into musical theatre, Rod is already in principal roles. They marry and stay together for life, until Rod dies aged 77, meanwhile welcoming a beautiful son into the world. Both manage solo careers some of the time. Dolores appears sans hubby in My Fair Lady, Applause, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Les Miserables. In her widowed 70s she joins a luminary line-up in musical comedy Half Time at Sydney's Hayes Theatre alongside the venue's eponymous star Nancye Hayes herself. She portrays everything from a Ziegfield Bride to a mouse. Crones, whores, Disney creatures, Litle Miss Sunshine, Wonder Woman, a Fairy Godmother. She choreographs shows and events, takes on Company Management posts, the lot. But the duo also becomes known as a team early on, appearing in shows together. Even before marrying, they are in Fiddler on the Roof, Dolores as daughter Tzeitel and Rod as The Fiddler. They reunite in Godspell, with Rod as Jesus. In Chicago Rod is MC, Dolores merry murderess Mona (Lipshitz). They become Johnny O'Keefe's parents in a tour of Shout. In Bye Bye Birdie they team up as Mayor and Mayor's Wife. This tradition helps them through a life few theatrical marriages survive. But true love is their bond. And just when you think this old hand may retire, she embarks on a quarter-century encore career teaching Dance and Musical Theatre at the McDonald College of Performing Arts, directing extravaganzas like Copacabana, Grease and Fame. In this 'giving back' incarnation, her passion and energy drive future talents. She takes student groups to the USA to perform, join classes and see hit shows of Broadway, LA and Vegas – even to China! And not just once or twice. She pioneers this McDonald custom that lives on in her wake. Then she gets to work on this book. She outlines highpoints, hallowed theatres and sellouts. Marvels at the stars, directors, designers and choreographers she's known. And drolly dismisses the less-than-kind ones. The torrent of names along this Australian journey is eye-popping. Greats like Jill Perryman, Gloria Dawn, Bobby Limb and Dawn Lake, Betty Pounder, Toni Lamond, Bruce Barry, June Bronhill, Hayes Gordon, even Hollywood favourite Eve Arden. Others are Lorraine Bayly, Normie Rowe, Jeanne Little, Richard Wherrett, Judi Connelli, Roger Kirk, Colette Mann, John Waters, Donna Lee, Ross Coleman . . . Well sure, headliners may put bums on seats, but there would be no show without the all-dependable, ever-reliable trouper. Keeping things real, the author peeps into those lesser ventures vital to most thespians: cruise ships, cabaret hecklers, bawdy theatre restaurants. Wherever there's a buck to keep the wolves from the door. Graft that the theatregoing hoi polloi seldom hear of, and the soulless sniff at from their 9-5 abyss. The madness, slog, frantic tours, fluffed lines, dodgy scenery, missed cues, last minute stand-ins, stages the size of stamps. Theatre digs, from the dubious to the idyllic. Career hiccups, injuries, bomb scares, fires and flops. Some catastrophic, others plain farcical. All part of the merry-go-round. Guessing what zenith waits round the next corner. History is marked by where she performs on events like the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Six-Day-War and Australia's Whitlam Dismissal. This astonishing soul then shares secrets and tips to aspirants and aficionados, those who crave the Razzle Dazzle, those seeking inspiration whatever their dream, and we who just love an enchanting memoir. Here's the crucial yarn of one who never sought acclaim but was just there. A formidable legacy. Look at that cover, check the blazing smile. Showbiz personified. A raconteuse extraordinaire. If only there were more Dolores Dunbars. 100% must read for all humans. ...more |
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C.S. Burrough
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Orry-Kelly was synonymous, in old Hollywood, with Oscar winning costumes and career-long close working affiliations with icons like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, Kay Francis, Dolores del Río, Ann
Orry-Kelly was synonymous, in old Hollywood, with Oscar winning costumes and career-long close working affiliations with icons like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, Kay Francis, Dolores del Río, Ann Sheridan and Merle Oberon. A plucky gay kid from the New South Wales township of Kiama, he was born in 1897 and sent to Sydney at seventeen to study banking. Defying his parents' plan for a respectable career, he instead became a small time stage actor. Using the great city Down Under as a springboard to the wider world, he landed in New York earning a crust however he could: painting scenery, wheeling and dealing, blocking handmade ties, getting nowhere on stage but sharing crumby rooms and friendships with other struggling performers, some to become legends, others fading into obscurity. Here he established friendships with upcoming or newly established Broadway headliners like Fanny Brice, George Burns and Mae West. He also took under his wing the nay too talented but fast-learning young Englishman Archie Leach, later carved into legend as heart throb Cary Grant. Having almost inadvertently landed on his feet as a costumier, with zero training or qualifications, he grabbed an offer in Hollywood in 1932 and stayed, we assume abandoning his own ambition of performing, knowing a good thing when he was onto it. He was Warner Bros' chief costume designer until 1944, later designing for Universal, RKO, 20th Century Fox, and MGM. He also spent a stint in the US Army Air Corps in WWII before being discharged with alcohol issues. Kelly's stylistic instinct defied the lure of glitter and sequins we associate with Hollywood's golden age, instead going firmly with understated elegance, gaining him the unswerving loyalty of great leading ladies who knew a good thing when they wore it on screen. With "networking" a phrase long yet to be coined, Kelly's "who-you-know" personal survival technique resulted in close lifelong bonds with the likes of Ethel Barrymore and their ilk. We sense him sniffing out the influential and using a blend of sycophancy and crafty haggling to forge vital allegiances. His movies included classics like 42nd Street, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, Oklahoma!, Auntie Mame, and Some Like It Hot. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, with several hundred movies under his belt, power dynamics had reversed and he became an authority to be reckoned with, famously dressing down Marilyn Monroe after one of her on-set flare ups. A chronic alcoholic, he died of liver cancer in 1964, aged 65, and was interred in the Hollywood Hills. His pallbearers included Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Billy Wilder and George Cukor and his eulogy was read by Jack L. Warner His unpublished memoir was found by a relative, in a pillowslip, where it had stayed until half a century after his death, when Gillian Armstrong's TV documentary on him, Women He's Undressed, triggered its erstwhile unlikely unveiling. Some argue the piece had never been published because of his open sexuality being too taboo at the time of its penning, with others insisting his priceless anecdotes would have insulted too many esteemed Hollywood insiders. I sense that a more accurate explanation is its unfinished condition. Yes, he had reached the end of his tale in this raw draught he left us, but the work is far from crafted to the finished state such a perfectionist would have required. He indeed opens with a thinly veiled disclaimer along the lines of 'people say I talk in circles', admitting, towards the end, of also having hired a ghost writer to rework it, but having thrown away that product, which he believed entirely erased his personality. Whatever the reason, I find it inconceivable he would have wanted this to be the draft we all read, hence it being hidden away for so long. A character as determined as he would have seen it published in his lifetime had he thought it ready for print. Whilst his flighty personality remains indelibly intact here, this glowing authenticity is the price of his narrative being, for the most part, an impenetrable and irritating rant, skipping back and forth like the proverbial twittering budgerigar. This tipsy dinner-party type rambling, with its apparent petty score-settling, I despaired of. Though it took every ounce of patience not to throw the hefty item across the room, I persevered, purely to devour each last golden anecdote. For although an award-winning designer does not a great writer make, here is a fidgety but irresistible raconteur whose priceless content far outweighs his tacky, exasperating style. The superb photographic content is sadly misplaced, inset among a brash and flippant page design I despised, with its nauseatingly coloured chapter graphics quite at odds with the understated style of Kelly's famous costumes (though perfectly as one with his brassy, undisciplined dialogue). The cumbersome dimensions of the 432 page, 7.7 x 1.7 x 9.4 inch hardback is like trying to hold up an oversized stone house brick to the bedside lamp. I recommend the Kindle or audio editions for all but professional weightlifters. Not a person I could bear to sit long with, Kelly's stories nevertheless deserve such preservation, despite their raffish form. I only wish more editing had been utilised for such an important book, to neaten things up and inject readability; but then considering it was published in 2015, so many decades after the narrator's demise, one must appreciate the impossibility of consultation with him over such matters. For Australians interested in their national history there are fascinating and extensive passages on early twentieth century Sydney, including the brothels and backstreets of Darlinghurst. Imperative reading for those drawn to behind-the-scenes Hollywood, here is a time capsule of inestimable value for any showbiz historian. Just conjure up every last ounce of patience for the precariously skittish and roundabout manner of storytelling. Highly recommended if you live well with the longwinded chaos of the otherwise supremely talented. ...more |
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“I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.”
― Jean Rhys
― Jean Rhys
tags:
jean-rhys-write
“A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
“My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
“A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened...
And then the days came and I was alone.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
And then the days came and I was alone.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
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Lauren wrote: "Thanks for the friend request. Also, good answer - very good answer!"Lauren wrote: "Thanks for the friend request. Also, good answer - very good answer!"
Thanks Lauren, yes I've been a diehard Jean Rhys fanatic for about 35 years :-)
