This is not a conventional biography. I rely not on documents, but almost exclusively on recorded interviews and memories of Michael Foot constituting a raw record of conversations not smoothed over b...
Then we got round to Michael’s health. He’s reached a rather difficult stage, Julie said and began to talk about Michael’s digressions, his seeming inability to get to the point or stay on it. It was...
The world seemed to turn on Michael’s likes and dislikes—as I learned when I mentioned I was giving a talk about Dr. Johnson at Cambridge. Michael objected to him as though Johnson was just another To...
The picture was Brennan’s, but it was no good to him if Cooper, his co-star, did not hold his own. It was characteristic of Walter Brennan to want Cooper not only to be happy making the picture, but a...
Talk of Vanessa reminded Michael of the terrible 1963 accident. Vanessa and Jason (in the backseat) had escaped harm. We were saved by the Health Service, Michael believed. Taken to the Hereford hospi...
Talk about Michael sex’s life segued into a discussion of Arthur Koestler’s rape of Jill, a story that Michael himself first revealed in a review of a book about Koestler. He caused an uproar in the p...
She sees you in her diaries as this fiery backbencher, and then you get in the cabinet and you’re behaving (to her) differently; that is, you seemed to be more of a compromiser. She found this almost...
Second only to the royals in Michael’s gallery of good-for-nothings were, of course, the Tories. John Major occupied a special page in Michael’s book of bad ones. The trouble began when Suraj Paul, a...
Richard Avedon photographs Marilyn, her torso covered in feathers (her sexual plumage) and wearing high heels, her left leg bent and brought up to her body so that the leg projects outward horizontall...
On the eve of America’s entrance into World War II, Walter Brennan embodied fundamental decency and democratic virtues that made him indispensable to Cooper’s signature Everyman roles. Brennan’s perfo...
Obviously fond of Jill, Paul remembered a time they were all together in a car arguing, and Jill whispered in Paul’s ear, Michael thinks he can win an argument by how loud he shouts.
No other supporting player won three Academy Awards, and you would be hard-pressed to name another character actor whose performances frequently overwhelmed those of ostensible leads like Joel McCrea...
My legs are not quite properly operating and I’m having physiotherapy every Tuesday, Michael said after Emma had beaten him to the phone. I accompanied him on one of these sessions, where he had to wa...
Michael was the male partner in a dance, but he did not know how to lead. Or rather, he led by default, since Jill did not challenge his authority. He simply filled a vacuum. As a political man, he wo...
Michael was astonished to see Reagan reading his speech off of the teleprompter. I’d never seen it before. Everybody does it now. But it’s an outrageous thing. It absolutely destroys the idea that the...
Michael often spoke of his father and their book discussions. Isaac Foot would visit London nearly every fortnight, Michael recalled, and they would see each other. Michael rarely spoke of anyone else...
Michael had been an all-day walker for much of his life, but at eighty-seven, the rises robbed him of air and he had to stop frequently to tell his anecdotes. Yet he was still taking buses and clatter...
Michael and Jill were connoisseurs of personality, transcending politics. They loved Randolph Churchill, who ran two losing campaigns against Michael in Plymouth and they adored Benjamin Disraeli, Mrs...
May 9: The London tabloid Empire News publishes Marilyn’s account via Ben Hecht of child abuse. What happened exactly is not clear, although apparently she was fondled, and then stammered when she tri...
May 8: Cukor shuts down production after Marilyn, with an obvious fever and chills, cannot control her shaking and rests on the set’s patio furniture. She again has a temperature of 101 degrees. Dr. S...
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