Book Bargains

Synopsis

I found myself sitting next to none other than Rex Harrison. I´d been warned he was a grumpy old bugger, so to break the ice I heard myself bragging that I was off to India to make a film for David Lean with Peggy Ashcroft, Alec Guinness, James Fox, Judy Davis and – `What? India?´ he said, his eyes glinting dangerously. `You´ll die in India. I bloody nearly did.´

Nigel Havers didn´t die in India. But he did have to survive recalcitrant extras, marauding monkeys and a rather grumpy Dame Peggy. The story of the filming of A Passage to India is just one of the hugely entertaining memories that the inimitable Nigel Havers shares in a memoir that is as charming, mischievous and engaging as the man himself.

His career has taken him from a schoolboy production of A Midsummer Night´s Dream to the red carpet on Oscar Night with Chariots of Fire, via starring roles in the West End, classic television series like Don´t Wait Up and a cameo in Little Britain. The Hollywood blockbusters that made him a household name are only the beginning.

With characteristic modesty and a captivating eye for the absurd, he treats us to the highlights and lowlights of a life like no other; a life in which chilling reality (watching his father Michael – later the Attorney General – begin his prosecution of the Yorkshire Ripper) and beguiling fantasy (sleeping with `Elizabeth Taylor´) continuously and arrestingly collide.