Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat,lonely,burning with fear and ambition,his childhood was an isolated one,scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom,he would plan great voyages,using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth centuryAs an adult,Hitch rigorously controlled the press's portrait of himself,drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. In this quick-witted portrait,Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes,who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances,just as Hitch did in his own films. Grace Kelly,Carey Grant and James Stewart despair of his detached directing style,and,perhaps most famously of all,Tippi Hedren endures cuts and bruises from a real-life fearsome flock of birds.Alfred Hitchcock wrests the director's chair back from the master of control and discovers what lurks just out of sight,in the corner of the shot.
Publisher: Vintage PublishingISBN: 9780099287667Number of pages: 288Weight: 214 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 18 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Superb,insightful short life... Deft and movingIrresistibleAn elegant and hugely enjoyable read(A) nutritious,compact and superb critical biographyShelves of serious biographies have been written on Alfred Hitchcock,but perhaps none as pleasurable as Peter Ackroyd's
Peter Ackroyd
Equally praised for his formally experimental fiction,his inventive biographies and his ambitious histories (particularly of his home and birthplace of London),Peter Ackroyd is arguably one of the greatest writers of his generation. With a particular partiality for Victorian and Gothic influences,his most famous novels include: Hawksmoor,Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem,The English Ghost and his own re-telling of The Canterbury Tales and The Death of King Arthur. His non-fiction ranges widely,encompassing: London the Biography,London the Concise Biography,London Under,Thames: Sacred River,Venice: Pure City,a multi-volume history of London (Foundation,Tudors,Civil War,Revolution) and Queer City as well as biographies of Chaucer,Shakespeare,Dickens,Blake,Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock.
Visit the Peter Ackroyd author page
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