A Positively Final Appearance by Alec Guinness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you only know Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, then you’re missing a bit. A lot, actually. Things like Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, which tend to rate highly in my universe. This is Guinness’ journal from 1997-98, following up his v. successful autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, and his second memoir, My Name Escapes Me.
It was v. interesting going back fifteen years to see what a professional actor made of things like the death of Diana and the faltering state of the British theatre. I grew particularly fond of Sir Alec’s dogs, as he wrote about them. And I love that he stayed at the Connaught, but wrote about it as if it was the local B&B. A real gem of a memoir — not quite as good, perhaps, as Peter O’Toole’s Loitering with Intent, but easily the best writing I’ve ever read by a Jedi.
Midatlantic Musings by Jane G. V. McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Mid-Atlantic Musings 