notanotherbookreview

https://www.mixcloud.com/WorldRadioParis/your-american-friend-in-paris-episode-14-joseph-harris/   Here is an interview to air in November with Joseph Harriss about JEAN GABIN and his significance  as artist and as a public figure, an "everyman" who came to personify France. J e an Gabin :  The Actor Who Was France The first biography in English of the iconic French film actor whose career and life mirrored both 20 th -century France and the early evolution of modern film. When Joseph Harriss published  T he Tallest Tower : Eiffel and the Belle Epoque, it was acclaimed as a definative book and it was written by an American. Now, the Paris based journalist has done it again with a different kind of icon in  Jean Gabin :  The Actor Who Was France (McFarland) .  Illustrated with more than 40 photographs, the book portrays in graphic detail G abin’s films and personal life, including his unhappy years in Hollywood and his la...

Dastardly Dickens – Men Behaving Badly Gwyn Conger found John Steinbeck impossible to live with and divorced him – he never forgave her. His behaviour was not unusual amongst famous writers. The London Times revealed last week how Victorian reformer and writing superstar, Charles Dickens, tired of his frumpy wife, Catherine, and tried to commit her to a lunatic asylum. Mrs Dickens discovered ‘That at last he had outgrown his liking for her,’ according to contemporary critic a nd novelist, Edward Cook. Cook further wrote ‘She had borne ten children and had lost many of her good looks, was growing old, in fact.’ Recently discovered at Harvard, letters revealing Dickens’s behaviour were published in the Times Literary Supplement to show a different Dickens dimension. Dickens had fallen in love at age 45 with actress, Ellen Ternan, in 1857. Catherine for Ellen. Carole for Gwyn – it happens. Dastardly Dickens then leaked a letter to the newspapers – many of whi...