Pure and impure genius

As Hamlet said, ‘Look here upon this picture and on this.’ Early this year Garry O’Connor produced a book about Paul Scofield. The actor’s personal life being famously uneventful, there is little there for lovers of theatre gossip. It is, despite a few pretentious notions about Scofield’s psyche, an admirably thoughtful book on the player’s art, combining a thorough knowledge of Scofield’s roles with a generous admiration for the man.

Now O’Connor has written Alec Guinness’s biography, and a much less respectful piece of work it turns out to be. Having already written one study of Guinness during the actor’s lifetime with, it seems, minimal co-operation from his subject, O’Connor now seems to be reproving the man for refusing to come clean in his own delightful memoirs and diaries about his most intimate self.

This is unfair. About Guinness’s unhappy relationship with his drunken, decadent mother there is much in the memoirs.