Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters
by John Coldstream (Editor), Dirk Bogarde
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Dirk Bogarde was known as the star of more than 60 films and a critically acclaimed author. To a privileged few, however, he was also a prolific, stimulating, and treasured correspondent. Bogarde was a secretive man who destroyed many of his own papers and diaries. Fortunately, the recipients of his letters treasured them, enabling John Coldstream to bring together this fascinating collection of hitherto unpublished material. Bogarde's letters were invariably frank, gossipy, funny, and show more often malicious. The joy of writing, particularly as he grew older and chose to live in France, was never far away. The letters display the qualities familiar to those who knew the private Bogarde: acute observation, laser-like intelligence, impatience with the foolish, compassion for the needy, a relish for the witty metaphor, and a catastrophic disdain for correct spelling and punctuation. Above all, to read his letters is to hear him talk, and no conversation with Dirk Bogarde was dull. show lessTags
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Revealing and insightful portrait on the man, himself, and what an entertaning tome it is.His letters, over the years, were brutal, honest, cruel, not very subtle and very funny.
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Gush, gush, gush - or as Dirk Bogarde would no doubt have it, gusch, guch, gutch. He couldn't spell for toffee and, as his editor John Coldstream wearily remarks, "The correct use of the apostrophe was as alien to him as Sanskrit."
And yet he spewed out words like a babbling brook - he told Norah Smallwood, the Chatto editor who launched him as an author: "I am really not a bit happy unless I show more am writing. Even a letter will do." But given that Bogarde wrote so much - 15 books, endless diaries and thousands of letters - it is strange that he never attempted to learn spelling.
Under Norah Smallwood's tactful tutelage, he made some inroads into split infinitives and hanging participles, and learned to curb his enthusiasm for adjectives - "I use them like carroway seeds in German cabbage" - but with spelling there is a sort of "I did it my way" defiance that feels like contempt. show less
And yet he spewed out words like a babbling brook - he told Norah Smallwood, the Chatto editor who launched him as an author: "I am really not a bit happy unless I show more am writing. Even a letter will do." But given that Bogarde wrote so much - 15 books, endless diaries and thousands of letters - it is strange that he never attempted to learn spelling.
Under Norah Smallwood's tactful tutelage, he made some inroads into split infinitives and hanging participles, and learned to curb his enthusiasm for adjectives - "I use them like carroway seeds in German cabbage" - but with spelling there is a sort of "I did it my way" defiance that feels like contempt. show less
added by John_Vaughan
Author Information
36+ Works 1,871 Members
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
The Guardian Book of the Week (2008-08-23)
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Dirk Bogarde
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- Members
- 56
- Popularity
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- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.83)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
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