Secret Dreams

"Of all the great actors of the twentieth century Michael Redgrave was the most wide ranging in his talent and yet the most private with a personal life of utmost complexity, often secret in its detail." "On stage he was a classical actor of range and greatness who also originated many memorable roles of the leading playwrights of the mid-twentieth century. In the cinema his first part was in Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Lady Vanishes and he went on to be remembered in films as diverse as The Browning Version, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Dam Busters and The Go-Between." "He wrote studies of acting, a novel, even an operetta at university, he adapted Henry James, and directed opera as well as plays. The son of actors, he married an actress and lived to see his children make names for themselves in theatre and films. Since his death several of his grandchildren have become the fourth generation of Redgraves to take to the stage and screen." "Using Redgrave's diaries and archives - made available for the first time - Alan Strachan, who directed some of Redgrave's last appearances on the stage, has uncovered the full story of an unorthodox life, with private guilts, demons and tensions 'which informed the public work with so much of its uniquely troubling intensity.'" "This first full biography examines the bisexuality that was part of his adult life and identifies many of his relationships during his marriage to Rachel Kempson, who had known from the outset of his divided nature."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.