One rung below greatness

Actors’ biographies, once a comparative rarity and usually ghosted and bowdlerised, spring forth every season. They are often pruriently, dubiously, sensational: we are told that Olivier had an affair with Danny Kaye, that Peggy Ashcroft was a near-nymphomaniac and Alec Guinness a covert gay cruiser, all with scant evidence and with little relation to their art. What a relief to read a sober biography of a distinguished player, Michael Redgrave, largely concentrating on his acting although not shirking the fact that he was a promiscuous, often guilt-ridden bisexual with a one-time flirtation with Stalinism.

Alan Strachan’s book — all the better for being written by an experienced man of the theatre — has two main agendas; first to give Redgrave his proper due as a major actor — his name not often nowadays linked with Richardson’s, Olivier’s or Gielgud’s — and secondly to dispute the obituarists’ notion that Redgrave, the Cambridge graduate and sometime schoolmaster, was a coldly intellectual rather than emotional actor.