A brilliant biography of the young Orson Welles, from his prodigious childhood and youth, his triumphs with the Mercury Theatre, to the making of Citizen Kane. Vivid, vastly entertaining, this is the definitive Welles biography.

The reason for the decline of Orson Welles's career is a hotly debated issue, but decline it certainly did. When Citizen Kane, his first film, opened in 1941, Welles was universally acclaimed as the most audacious filmmaker alive. But instead of marking the beginning of a triumphant career in Hollywood, the film still regularly voted the greatest ever made proved to be an exception in Welles's life and work.In 1947 Welles left America for Europe and lived for the best part...

A companion volume to Being an Actor, Callow's classic text about the experience of acting in the theatre, Shooting the Actor reveals the truth about film acting. The book describes his film work, from Amadeus to Four Weddings and a Funeral, from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls to Shakespeare in Love.Its centrepiece is a hilarious and sometimes agonising account of the making of Manifesto, shot in the former Yugoslavia. When Callow first met the film's director Duš...

In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic survey of Orson Welles’ life and work, Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, looking closely at the triumphs and failures of an ambitious one-man assault on one medium after another – theatre, radio, film, television, even, at one point, ballet – in each of which his radical and original approach opened up new directions and hitherto unglimpsed p...

An entertaining biography of Dickens by one of our finest actorsAcclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow captures the essence of Charles Dickens in a sparkling biography that explores the central importance of the theatre to the life of the greatest storyteller in the English language.From his early years as a child entertainer in Portsmouth to his reluctant retirement from ‘these garish lights’ just before his death, Dickens was obsessed with the stage. Not only was he a da...

How are great turning points in history experienced by individuals?As Britain pulls away from Europe great British writers come together to give voice to their innermost feelings. These writers include novelists, writers of books for children, of comic books, humourists, historians, biographers, nature writers, film writers, travel writers, writers young and old and from an extraordinary range of backgrounds. Most are famous perhaps because they have won the Booker or other literar...

An alternative autobiography of the well-loved actor and man of the theatre, winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography.In My Life in Pieces Simon Callow retraces his life through the multifarious performers, writers, productions and events which have left their indelible mark on him.The story begins with Peter Pan – his first ever visit to the theatre – before transporting us to southern Africa and South London, where Callow spent much of h...

Insightful, incisive & enlightening, the first volume of Simon Callow's comprehensive biography of Orson Welles.Now in abridged audio, Callow's vastly entertaining chronicle of Welles's first 26 years seems even finer than it did in 1995. The author's ability to skewer his subject's evasions and lies while retaining critical affection for him is perhaps explained by the fact that Callow, an actor himself, understands the need to mythologise. Welles's innovative theatrical work in t...

The creator of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Henry VIII and Captain Bligh, Charles Laughton's career spans 50 films and 40 stage roles. This entralling biography follows him from his parents' hotel in Scarborough to his climactic assumption of the role of King Lear in Statford at the end of his life. Along the way we meet a galaxy of Hollywood greats - from Korda, Hitchcock and Billy WIlder to Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. We also discover a hugely talented and complex ma...

Imagined by Oscar Wilde's own grandson, this fictionalised conversation presents the essential biography of the poet, playwright and gay martyr.Renowned for his endlessly quotable pronouncements, Oscar Wilde cut a dashing figure in late Victorian London ... until his tragic downfall resulting from an ill-judged libel action. We remember him not only for his famous trial and imprisonment, but also for a "devil's dictionary" of timeless aphorisms and for the enduring brilliance of pl...

A short life of Dickens which celebrates the impact of the theatre on his life and workAcclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow captures the essence of Charles Dickens in a sparkling biography that explores the central importance of the theatre to the life of the greatest storyteller in the English language.From his early years as a child entertainer in Portsmouth to his reluctant retirement from ‘these garish lights’ just before his death, Dickens was obsessed with the stag...

This is an examination of 'The Night of the Hunter', Charles Laughton's only outing as a film director. It looks at the symbolism of the piece, at Willa, her throat cut sitting in the Model-T Ford, and the Preacher, a silhouetted threat on the horizon.