Nominate a Biography: what authors say

Alec Guinness: the authorised biography by Piers Paul Read*

Biographies vary in scope and ambition; some are long, detached and fully documented records of the subject's life, others a shorter comment or appreciation coloured by the biographer's own interest. A good 'biography of record' will have sifted through the available material though even here the author's prejudices will affect the end product. For example, Alec Guinness's conversion to Catholicism was of more interest to me, as a Catholic, than it might have been to an author purely concerned with his career as a actor.

I was asked to write Alec Guinness's biography by his widow, Merula Guinness, and was assisted by their son Matthew Guinness. I was undoubtedly chosen precisely because Merula knew that I would be interested in more than Alec's stage and film career.

My research into the life of Alec Guinness was largely through his diaries and correspondence. His chief correspondents were his wife Merula, a friend in New York:, Anne Kaufman Schneider; and a Benedictine nun, Dame Felicitas Corrigan, OSB. Clearly, he had other equally close friends to whom he spoke on the telephone because they were close at hand, or did not like writing letters: and in this way a biographer's reliance on written records will affect the picture he presents.

The bfi collection was particularly useful in casting light on Alec Guinness's role in the making of The Scapegoat; and also in his relationship with David Lean during the making of Passage to India.

[One biography that comes to mind as the best I've ever read] is Nicholas Mosley's Rules of the Game.

*Permission granted by the publishers, Simon and Schuster