The latest volume of Dirk Bogarde's autobiography.'I learned very early on in my life that nothing was for ever; so I should have been aware of disillusion in early middle age: but, somehow, we try to obliterate early warnings and go cantering along hopefully, idiotically ...'No matter that the tide will turn once again and destroy all that you build (and in the depth;of your soul you know that this will happen), you thrust the spade in the hard-packed rippled sand, outline the beginning of a moat. Soon the fort will arise, decorated all about, once again,with shells and weed, with towers and turrets, arches and a drawbridge, each turret capped with a conical limpet shell. As glorious as the first one ever was, probably even better from the experience gained by its destruction, and every bit as impermanent ...'How odd it is that one is not prepared for the "dissolving of the fort" one has constructed with such care in later life. But we do not learn. We always believe that...

In 1988 Dirk Bogarde returned from two idyllic decades in France to live in England. Shortly afterwards, the then Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph, admiring the 'lucid frankness' of Bogarde's memoirs, invited him to review some books for the newspaper. Over the next eight years or so, Bogarde wrote much of the criticism, essays, obituaries, fragments of autobiography and appreciations which are collected in this volume - a body of work that offers fascinating insights into the life, mind and views of one of Britain's most admired authors and actors.Perhaps the central piece in the book is the now-famous article 'A Short Walk from Harrods', which Bogarde wrote for the Independent on Sunday soon after returning to London. In it he describes what it feels like to walk among familiar ghosts and to dine with those he considers 'the living dead'. A momentous review of three Holocaust books is accompanied by an article...

Following Bogarde from childhood through adolescence, to the beginnings of his budding career, A Postillion Struck By Lightning is a heartfelt memoir, offering insight into what created the drive and charisma that eventually made him a star. Dreamy, sun-soaked summers full of freedom and mucking about with his sister are mixed with holidays in France and rambling the countryside.Writing plays instead of playing sports, Dirk's talents lie in the creativity of painting and expression rather than in the precision of maths or science, much to the growing concern of his parents. Packed off to live with relatives in Scotland, his father hopes that a proper Scottish education will equip his son to follow in his footsteps for a career in Newspapers.In Scotland, Dirk must learn to defend himself, he must learn to sound like a native Glaswegian, and hide his intense homesickness. In essence; he must learn to act.First published in 1977, A Postillion Struck by...

From 1927 to 1934 the young Dirk Bogarde lived in a remote cottage in the Sussex Downs with his sister Elizabeth and their strict nanny, Lally.For the children it was an idyllic time of joy and adventure: of gleaning at the end of summer, of oil lamps and wells, of harvests and harvest mice in the Great Meadow.This lost world, visited fleetingly in A Postillion Struck by Lightning, the first volume of Dirk Bogarde's autobiography, is seen here through the eyes of an innocent but shrewd eleven-year-old. With great sensitivity and poignancy it captures the sounds and scents, the love and gentleness that surrounded the young boy as the world outside prepared to go to war.

In Snakes and Ladders, the second instalment of Dirk Bogarde's carefully observed autobiography, we are taken from the challenges of his army training camp, through the horrors of war, to his glittering – if often trying – film career. We see the thoughtful boy finding his way alongside his fellow recruits, to emerge from the war a thoughtful man, shaped in many ways by his harrowing experiences.Somewhat falling into his career, Dirk struggles with the demands that such great success brings with it. With personal insight into his close friendship with Judy Garland, his working method with Visconti, and his many vital relationships with friends and family, Dirk sheds an honest and not always flattering light on his life.First published in 1978, Snakes and Ladders is a fascinating and illuminating book that delves deep within Bogarde's own character, the people that mattered to him, and the exotic and star strewn world that he moved in.

In the uneasy aftermath of war, a group of ordinary, civilised people on an island off Java face the legacy of hatred and corruption left by the Japanese occupation. With sudden and violent death ever present, they seize their moments of happiness and try above all else to stay alive until the opportunity for release arrives. Selfishness, sex, greed, fear, revenge, all play their part; so too do the finer instincts of love, loyalty and concern, for people have a way of both hurting and caring for one another. Men and women, soldiers and civilians, Europeans and Asians - Dirk Bogarde brings each of them alive through his marvellously witty dialogue and penetrating sense of character. At times gloriously funny, never sitting in judgement, he portrays their fallible, complex humanity as the thin skin of conventional behaviour, tautened in the corrosive atmosphere of the East Indies, gradually begins to split. As compelling as it is enjoyable to read, Dirk Bogarde's novel is both a...

William Caldicott's marriage is in ruins so he has travelled to France to uncover the mystery of his brother James's disappearance. Upon discovering the fate of his brother, William also discovers that he has inherited the lease to James' house and sees this as an ideal opportunity to rebuild his life.