The Life and Death of Peter Sellers author Roger Lewis
New Edition available here.
'A fascinating, tragic and instructive story, vividly told' Sunday TelegraphRoger Lewis, in his no-holds-barred biography, exposes a Peter Sellers the world little knows. Recognized as the greatest British comic since Charlie Chaplin, Sellers was the grand master of fifty-five films - from Dr. Strangelove, to Being There and the Pink Panther hits.But shadowing his phenomenal career was a history of increasingly bizarre behaviour involving psychotic violence, compulsive promiscuity, drug abuse and humiliating self-destructive obsessions with people including Princess Margaret, Sophia Loren, Liza Minnelli and each of his four wives (Ann Hayes, Britt Ekland, Miranda Quarry and Lynne Frederick). He alternately showered his wives and children with gifts and then threatened to kill them. Sellers' fluidity as an actor made for a terrifying madness that grew like a slow metastasizing cancer throughout his adult life.The Life and Death of Peter Sellers concludes with his premature death at the age of 54, 'sick at heart and alone in those sunless hotel rooms', so recoiled from intimacy that no one really knew him anymore.
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1:17:18
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1:17:18
Visible Darkness: UNDER THE SKIN
Maureen Foster's book on Under the Skin was an inspiration for Visible Darkness: The Cinema of Jonathan Glazer and so I'm republished this episode which was originally broadcast two years ago.
Darkness Visible is available from Sticking Place books at a discount for the UK and US here.
And from all good book dealers for the rest of the world.
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1:09:46
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1:09:46
Film Critic Xan Brooks on his novel The Catchers
Xan Brooks has been a film critic and journalist for decades, hosting the ground-breaking Film Weekly for The Guardian along with Jason Solomons. He's now a novelist with The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times and his new book The Catchers, available here.
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1:06:28
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1:06:28
Birth: David Thomson talks Jonathan Glazer's second film
A podcast to accompany the release of my book Darkness Visible: the Cinema of Jonathan Glazer, available HERE
Jonathan Glazer has created some of the most unforgettable images in twenty-first-century cinema. From the dreamlike menace of Sexy Beast to the haunting abstractions of Under the Skin and the chilling banality of evil in The Zone of Interest, his films blend surreal intensity with razor-sharp formal control. But Glazer’s world doesn’t stop at the cinema screen-it extends into commercials, music videos and short films that have redefined visual storytelling. In Darkness Visible, critic and author John Bleasdale guides readers through the full scope of Glazer’s career, offering a vivid, provocative and deeply informed portrait of a filmmaker who resists interpretation even as his work demands it. With chapters on each feature film, along with Glazer’s groundbreaking work in advertising and video, this is the first comprehensive account of a visionary whose cinema explores the dark undercurrents of modern life-and leaves audiences changed.
John Bleasdale is a film critic and writer whose work is regularly published in Variety, Sight and Sound, The Economist, The Financial Times and The Guardian. He is also a contributing editor of The New World and hosts the podcast Writers on Film podcast. His book The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick (2025) was published by the University Press of Kentucky.
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52:35
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52:35
Shawn Levy talks CLINT
Buy a copy here.
New York Times "Editors Choice," Los Angeles Times "Must Read Book for Summer," and a New Yorker "Best Book of the Year So Far"
"This is the biography of Clint Eastwood we've been waiting for." — Sir Christopher Frayling, author of Sergio Leone
From the acclaimed film critic and New York Times bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, a revelatory portrait of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in movie history and an imposing icon of American culture for six decades.
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Writers on Film is the only podcast to focus on film books and to talk to the best authors working in the area of cinema. From Making Of tomes to biographies, studies to novelisations, author and film critic John Bleasdale is fascinated by where the written word intersects with the world of the big screen. Get bonus content on Patreon
A proud part of the Film Stories Podcast Network: www.filmstories.co.uk
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