Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  1. John Osborne had died on Christmas Eve.

  2. Fox, who had offered to take Dirk to Osborne’s funeral in Shropshire.

  1. Arnold Wesker and Anthony Creighton, who had commented disobligingly following Osborne’s death.

  2. HO, then Helen Dawson and working for The Observer, had visited the location of Justine in 1968.

  1. Marcus Aurelius and Camille Paglia.

  1. David Luke.

  1. His seventy-fifth birthday.

  1. La Colombe d’Or at Saint Paul de Vence by Martine Buchet; photographs by Prosper Assouline (Editions Assouline, 1993).

  2. DL had read A Particular Friendship, in which Dirk mentioned the published diaries of both Lady Cynthia Asquith and Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon. She had also been given those of Cynthia Gladwyn, wife of Gladwyn Jebb, Ambassador to Paris 1954–60.

  3. Duff and Diana Cooper.

  1. Fiona Shaw was playing the title role in the National Theatre production of Richard II, which had toured to Paris.

  2. Stella, Dirk’s bonne à tout faire.

  3. Closing Ranks.

  1. Not exactly, but it was another Bank Holiday weekend.

  2. The British Comedy Society had initiated a commemoration of the ‘Doctor’ films at Pine-wood.

  1. He meant Valentina Cortese, not Viveca Lindfors.

  1. Enthusiastic admirers of Dirk’s work were based at the Paris outpost of W. H. Smith and at Galignani in the rue de Rivoli.

  2. Clare Alexander.

  1. At the Institut Français in South Kensington, not the Consulate as Dirk thought initially.

  1. Unsurprisingly, the mathematics had gone awry. This was Dirk’s fourth letter to DL.

  2. Hélène Bordes.

  1. In the semi-finals of the UEFA European Cup, held in the UK, Germany had beaten England on penalties.

  2. The poet Alice Meynell.

  1. Dirk was comparing two great Parisian purveyors of fine foods with Partridges in Sloane Street.

  2. Dirk would dedicate Closing Ranks to Peter Wheeler, saying ‘Without whom …’.

  1. A bomb had exploded in the host city for the Olympic Games.

  2. Published by Souvenir Press, 1992; Dirk’s reading was released on cassette by Reed Audio.

  1. A Month by the Lake, directed by John Irvin, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Edward Fox.

  2. Vanessa Redgrave had been Robert Fox’s mother-in-law, through his marriage to Natasha Richardson.

  1. In May HO had warned Dirk of rumours that Sheridan Morley was at work on a book about him. On learning this, Dirk found himself ‘unable to eat any of the lunch I’d carefully prepared. Peas, new spuds, scallops.’ Dirk Bogarde: Rank Outsider was duly published by Bloomsbury. Dirk did not sue. Indeed he informed the author that it ‘could have been worse I suppose’ – in the circumstances, high praise.

  2. Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Career Illustrated by Robert Tanitch (Ebury Press, 1988). The book was withdrawn while a passage about Song Without End was reprinted; and Dirk’s ‘damages’ of £2,500 went to BACUP.

  3. Roger Lewis’s imminent biography, The Real Life of Laurence Olivier (Century), was attracting attention.

  1. For the Time Being comprised not only his book reviews from 1988 to 1996 but also other pieces of his journalism from that period and before.

  1. The Harrisons were friends of the late Dorothy Gordon.

  2. Dorothy Gordon’s daughter.