Richard Burton: A Life
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Condition remarks: tidy ex-lib copy.
Few careers in twentieth-century theatre and cinema burn as brightly — or as turbulently — as that of Richard Burton, the Welsh miner's son who became one of the most celebrated and scrutinised actors of his generation. Melvyn Bragg's Richard Burton: A Life is the definitive biography of a man whose extraordinary gifts were matched only by the intensity of his personal demons, chronicling Burton's meteoric rise from the coal valleys of South Wales to the glittering heights of Broadway, Hollywood, and the Old Vic, with all the passion, excess, and tragedy that defined his journey. From his legendary stage performances under the mentorship of Philip Burton to his incendiary on-screen romances — most notoriously with Elizabeth Taylor — and his much-debated failure to claim the Academy Award that his talent so clearly merited, this is a portrait painted in vivid, unflinching detail. Bragg, himself a man of letters with an intimate understanding of the British cultural landscape, draws on personal diaries, interviews, and previously unseen documents to construct a narrative that is as much a meditation on the nature of genius as it is a study of self-destruction. The prose is authoritative yet empathetic, refusing to reduce its subject to either saint or sinner, instead presenting a full-blooded human being wrestling with fame, identity, and ambition on a truly operatic scale. Rich in literary and theatrical allusion — Burton was as comfortable quoting Dylan Thomas as he was performing Shakespeare — the biography asks a haunting question that lingers long after the final page: what becomes of a man who possesses everything the world can offer, yet remains perpetually unsatisfied?
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Condition remarks: tidy ex-lib copy.
Few careers in twentieth-century theatre and cinema burn as brightly — or as turbulently — as that of Richard Burton, the Welsh miner's son who became one of the most celebrated and scrutinised actors of his generation. Melvyn Bragg's Richard Burton: A Life is the definitive biography of a man whose extraordinary gifts were matched only by the intensity of his personal demons, chronicling Burton's meteoric rise from the coal valleys of South Wales to the glittering heights of Broadway, Hollywood, and the Old Vic, with all the passion, excess, and tragedy that defined his journey. From his legendary stage performances under the mentorship of Philip Burton to his incendiary on-screen romances — most notoriously with Elizabeth Taylor — and his much-debated failure to claim the Academy Award that his talent so clearly merited, this is a portrait painted in vivid, unflinching detail. Bragg, himself a man of letters with an intimate understanding of the British cultural landscape, draws on personal diaries, interviews, and previously unseen documents to construct a narrative that is as much a meditation on the nature of genius as it is a study of self-destruction. The prose is authoritative yet empathetic, refusing to reduce its subject to either saint or sinner, instead presenting a full-blooded human being wrestling with fame, identity, and ambition on a truly operatic scale. Rich in literary and theatrical allusion — Burton was as comfortable quoting Dylan Thomas as he was performing Shakespeare — the biography asks a haunting question that lingers long after the final page: what becomes of a man who possesses everything the world can offer, yet remains perpetually unsatisfied?