Product Description

Sellers has long been acknowledged as one of the screen's greatest comic actors. In this biography, Roger Lewis draws on over 300 interviews with Sellers's family, wives, mistresses, enemies and co-stars to show how he succeeded, and why it was at such a cost to himself and to those who he professed to love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85199 in Books
• Published on: 1995-02-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 900 pages

Daily Mail
Torrential psychological biography ... a savage but satiating account

Sunday Telegraph
A fascinating, tragic and instructive story, vividly told

Film Review
An absolute revelation, the book grips from the first page to the last

Customer Reviews

Don't believe the dullards
I am gobsmacked at the low rating that this book has been given. I can only suppose that dullards want dull, colourless and unchallenging books that don't upset their preconceptions or that don't say anything nasty about that terribly funny Inspector Clouseau. Well, don't believe the unhype, this one is utterly compelling, beautifully written and fascinatingly labyrinthine (this is a good thing).

Aren't you fed up of humdrum by-the-numbers biographies? The sort that just give you a dreary Gradgrindish recitation of facts: In 1963 he did this, then next year he did that and the year after he did some other things.

Lewis, who is tellingly name checked by Jonathan Coe in the acknowledgements to his superb biography of BS Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant, is upfront about the selectivity of his biography, that it can only be one person's version of another person's life. Otherwise the danger is that the biographer (implicitly) says that this is the truth, the whole truth and the only truth.

It is obvious even from the lightweight books on Sellers, with their anecdotes about his penchant for pranks and practical jokes, his deliberate corpsing and aggravated improvisation and his obsession with cars and gadgets, that there was a very dark undertow of cruelty and disengagement in Seller's life. I think what has prompted some of the outraged comments about this book is the disparity it reveals between the onscreen characters and the offscreen man. Sellers is hardly a unique example of this phenomenon. But just because he was a comic actor it doesn't mean that in a biography all we should get is a jolly Pink Pantherish romp through his life. Sellers was clearly a fascinating and complex man with many demons and pyschological, er, issues. This is precisely the stuff I want a biography to address.

Yes, Lewis is scathing about Sellers peronality flaws but this balanced by his brilliant dissection and celebration of Seller's talent and artistry, especially in his early film work. Surely the fascination of any notoriously 'difficult' artist is in endeavouring to uncover the extent to which the art is a result of, and an excuse for, the defects in their daily lives. The book is vast and there are countless diversions, tangents, tributaries and curiosities covered but this is not padding, it's vital in order to give a full expostion of the man and his times, circumstances, influences and so on.

I wouldn't claim to have been a huge Sellers fan before reading this book, but I was interested enough to want to read it, and having done so it has sharpened my appetite to track down many of his films that I haven't yet seen. What greater tribute is there to biographer and his subject?

difficult but great book on complex man
There have been many books about the late, great Peter Sellers over the years, but this biography takes the time and hassle to present the reader with a detailed and revealing portrait of a talented but troubled actor.
I do find the author's style of writng somewhat confusing sometimes;Roger Lewis seems to cover different incidents of Sellers's life all at the same time.
However, I can quite easily overlook that minor quibble, as the text has been so brilliantly written and researched.
Both Peter Sellers's life and films are thoroughly examined, attempting to probe into the man.
The result is a picture of a man who claimed to have no inner self or personality of his own and became immersed in the art of characterizations.
The book is quite a challenge to read, but please stick with it and enjoy a terrific biography about a terrific actor.

Hateful yet compelling
"Hateful yet compelling" is the best way to sum this up - one wants to murmur, with Canon Chasuble, "Charity, my dear Miss Prism, charity" - but I'm obliged to admit it sustained me during a long and noisy train trip from Glasgow to London. Still an' all, Lewis deserves the odd smack around the head (House of Lords permitting) for his inability to resist quoting poetry or whatever else takes his fancy whenever it should strike him, and his belief that every aspect of every film is yet another of the dazzling array of clues about the psyche of this "evil" (his word) man. Spike Milligan, when quoted, shows a pity and understanding of Sellers which has been earned and which feels more convincing. Lewis acknowledges the Toadlike aspect of himself as a biographer and the inevitable subjectivity of such a task, but even so you feel you have been buttonholed by someone who, for all his indefatigable industry and knowledge, doesn't actually see things in perspective. Which is not to say I'd rather a biography written by a crony, but without an overlay of kindness this effort at his life doesn't seem to be telling a complete story. I ended up feeling very sorry for Sellers for the sustained assault, whatever the horrors of his personality.