Richard Burton - Michael Munn

Richard Burton was a man of contradictions. He wanted to escape the mining community of Wales, yet his heart never left it. He wanted to achieve greatness, but he would have been as happy to have achieved it on a rugby pitch as on a stage. He wanted to live life to the full, but he came to know that he was driving himself to an early grave through drink. He was an avid reader and a lover of poetry; a scholar of life and culture. Yet he seemed to squander his talents and find happiness at the bottom of a beer glass, giving up all hopes of becoming a great actor when he sold his soul to Hollywood and his heart to Elizabeth Taylor. But it was never quite that simple. Here is the full story of Richard Burton's life and remarkable career, revealed by a writer who knew him from 1968 up to the time they were together on Burton's last film in 1984. Munn recounts the deepest and often darkest thoughts and secrets that Burton shared with him, revealing hell-raising stories that Hollywood quashed to save Burton's early film career including affairs with Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe, being caught in a brothel with Errol Flynn, and a fist fight with Frank Sinatra. He also movingly recalls nursing Burton, through an epileptic seizure of a kind that gripped him from his early days, and witnessing a terrifying encounter Burton had with an East End gangster that ended in violence. In writing this definitive biography, Michael Munn has been able to draw on his conversations with Burton over the years and on formal interviews and informal conversations with a great many of the stars who knew and worked with Burton. This definitive biography includes explosive new material confided by Burton. Author has a strong track record for classy, headline-catching, big selling biographies.