Read for Book club. I am not a fan of Richard Burton but I enjoyed reading about his extraordinary life. From very poor, working class mining family in Welsh valleys to the pinnacle of stardom, married to Elizabeth Taylor and mixing with royalty and cream of the acting and literary world. Bragg uses large portions of Burton’s own journal entries to allow his thoughts about his world tell the story. ( )

Richard Burton; Prince of Players. Michael Munn. 2008. You would think I’d be over my adolescent crush on Richard Burton. Not so! Unfortunately this biography reads more like a movie star magazine article than a real biography. There was more name dropping and bed hopping than anything else, but to be honest Burton did know and act with a lot of famous people and he did go to bed with lots women. In other words, I think the definitive biography of Burton has yet to be written. ( )

Despite being acknowledged as an excellent actor both on stage and in films, Richard Burton is largely remembered for his tempestuous marriages to Elizabeth Burton, and his enormous capacity for alcohol. Melvyn Bragg’s excellent biography delves into his life, to reveal that there was far far more to Burton – that he was a highly intelligent and thoughtful man, a voracious reader, that he was plagued by guilt over his children, and generous to a fault.

Burton’s notebooks (essentially a diary) which he started during his life with Elizabeth Taylor were released to Bragg by Burton’s widow Sally, and here they appear (albeit abridged) for the first time in print. After describing Burton’s tough but loving childhood and adolescence, and marriage to first wife Sybil, Bragg wisely lets his own writing take a back seat to Burton’s words, as he reproduces large sections of the notebooks. (It is worth noting that the notebooks have since been released in their entirety as The Richard Burton Diaries; I have a copy of this and intend to read it very soon, but Bragg’s biography is useful in that it provides context.) I thoroughly enjoyed reading Burton’s words – he was incredibly witty (I laughed out loud on several occasions, particularly when he described social situations), certainly wry, and often melancholy.

The biography is clearly meticulously researched, and while Bragg is never sycophantic, he is always respectful of his subject. What I did find unusual at first, was that in many ways, it was also a study of Burton the man. Bragg would offer his own opinion as to Burton’s motivations for certain actions, and it felt as if he was trying to understand certain events in this very interesting life, rather than just relate them. However, this did not spoil my enjoyment of the book, and actually demonstrated the author’s great interest in his subject.

The book was written with the collaboration of many of Burton’s family and friends, and refreshingly, does not just focus on the more scandalous areas of his life; it concerns itself equally with Burton’s Welsh family, his career, his life after ‘the Elizabethan period’ and of course, his premature death at a time which tragically came at a time when he seemed to have his life back on track.

It’s a thick book – 600+ pages – but so well written, and so very interesting, that I found myself reading huge chunks at a time. Anybody interested in Richard Burton, or indeed in acting in general, should certainly read this – I strongly recommend it, and will definitely be keeping it to read again in the future. ( )

One of the reasons I joined Library Thing was to do justice to this excellent biography of one of my favorite actors. If you keep a journal, mind that it might someday be read -- or not. Burton's writing is the star of this biography, and Bragg does well to get out of the way and let Burton speak. When you finish reading A Life, you really do feel you understand who one of the most famous actors of the 20th century really was -- kind, sensitive, profane and above all courageous. ( )

Tynan thought old Burton got by just fine without the supporting cast. I've always felt the same way. You just don't really notice those playing with him. The only time i ever really noticed another was in that strange little movie with Rex Harrison. R.H. could go toe to toe with Burton on most nights.
He reads Dickens, Solzhenitsyn, Anthony Powell - "not a writer for every mood" and puzzles away at the character of . . . and the notebooks record the pills, the insomnia. Burton builds up his paperback library on the Kalizma - buys and "devours" ULYSSES, thereby fulfilling a promise in his journal a fortnight before.
Find a great Burton interview with Kenneth Tynan, enfant terrible of drama critics, on You Tube. One of my childhood heroes, it was old Jenkin's who got me interested in literature, etc. etc. Being a nevous tic-filled type, not as bad as The Great Cham of Literature, I admired immensely the way Burton, Lawrence Harvey, and George Sanders could keep head, shoulders, and arms still. The Jesuits did their best to flog these things out of me, but like merriment they always kept breaking through.
By the way, Bragg's Burton is excellent. ( )