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Employing both the language and lucidity of the young boy that he evokes, the actor turned author, Dirk Bogarde, presents us with a charming recollection of his childhood. From 1927 to 1934 he lived in a remote cottage in the Sussex Downs with his sister Elizabeth and their strict but loving nanny, Lally. For the children it was an idyllic time of joy and adventure: of gleaning at the end of summer, of oil lamps and wells, of harvests and harvest mice in the Great Meadow.

With great sensitivity and poignancy, this memoir captures the sounds and scents, the love and gentleness that...

After completing work on Visconti's Death in Venice, the celebrated actor seeks a refuge from 20 years of 'continual motion'. This dream of a peaceful retreat materialises itself in the form of a neglected farmhouse in the South of France. However, before he is rewarded with the calm he craves, he is forced to endure the relative evils of dying olive trees and the rampaging mistral. We are exposed to the struggles and intricacies in trying to change the very fabric of one's existence. In this pursuit of the tranquil, Bogarde manages to portray the simplest of issues in the most delicate...

'The fact is that you are surplus and they need an extra body.'

In the uneasy aftermath of war, a group of ordinary British soldiers and their families, on an island off Java face the legacy of hatred and corruption left by the Japanese occupation. With sudden and violent death ever present, they seize their moments of happiness and try above all else to stay alive until the opportunity for release arrives.

Selfishness, sex, greed, fear and revenge, all play their part; so too do the finer instincts of love, loyalty and concern, for people have a way of both hurting and...

The fabulous but wavering old Lady Peverill, known as "Cuckoo," lives with her husband, the Napoleon-mad military historian Archie. Dissatisfied with all that surrounds her and overcome by sheer boredom, she ventures down to the lake at the edge of their estate. Pockets filled with stones, she begins to walk tragically into the water only to be rescued by a sparsely clothed twenty-year-old, Marcus Pollock. Feigning that he merely saved her from an 'accident', he is brought back to the villa where he moves in, admired by Archie for his uncanny resemblance to l'Aiglon, Napoleon's only son....

With separation from his family looming, the writer William Caldicott needs to find some respite. But when William receives a cryptic letter of farewell from his estranged brother James, further complications are only added. Along with the letter is the key to James' house in France.

Sensing the potentially reformative aspect of such a break, William hesitantly takes the key and begins the search for his brother. He rapidly becomes embedded in the fabric of rural France, learning that rumours travel quicker than him, and that connections and secrets are paramount. He eventually...

Filling in the gaps left between his previous memoirs, as well as highlighting new episodes, Backcloth explores the patterns of pleasure and pain that have made up Bogarde's extraordinary life. It is based on personal letters, notebooks and diaries, covering many aspects of a celebrated life. We share experiences from his family home in Hampstead through to his farmhouse retreat in Provence. This memoir highlights the people, emotions and episodes that made him into the man that so many loved. It is an especially searching and intimate volume of his acclaimed memoirs. Written with...

Forced into returning to London because of his manager and partner's fast deteriorating health, Bogarde has to re-adapt to life in the West London neighbourhoods that groomed him as an aspiring young actor. But with his fame fading and his own life descending into old age, the entire process becomes rather difficult to endure. He stalks the streets like an 'apologetic turtle' and avoids society, announcing with his effortless wit that he shall, from then on, only do 'matinees' because he is too tired to go out in the evenings. Although this memoir finds Bogarde at his most vulnerable he...

The Grayles have lived at Hartleap since Canute. They know this and are proud of the fact. Now they stand round the bed of their eldest nanny who is about to slip away.

Ada Stephens - known as Nanny Grayle and well into her nineties - will not go quietly. In the strange clarity which comes with the last remission, she looks at the saddened faces about her and surprises them all. She says that the most adored of her charges, Rufus, is 'tainted' and that his father, the revered war hero 'Beau' Grayle, was 'wicked'. None of them is going to get anything in her will - she has left...

During his many reconnaissance missions in Europe and the Far East, the young Bogarde experienced the terror of enemy attack and the horror of its aftermath, together with the intense camaraderie and bitter humour of the battlefield. He also felt, like countless others, a feeling of utter hopelessness at the war's end, when, as suddenly as the fighting had stopped, these youthful, but hardened comrades-in-arms were dispersed to find their feet in a traumatised world.

Less than a year after demob no one could have been more astonished to find himself starring in his third feature...

In 1988 Dirk Bogarde returned from two idyllic decades in France to live in England because of his partner's serious illness. Shortly afterwards, the then Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph, admiring the 'lucid frankness' of Bogarde's memoirs, invited him to review some books for the newspaper. Over the next eight years or so, Bogarde wrote much of the criticism, essays, obituaries, fragments of autobiography and appreciations which are collected in this volume - a body of work that offers fascinating insights into the life, mind and views of one of Britain's most admired authors and...

Following on from his previous novel, Jericho, and re-evoking the manifold themes and compelling rural French atmosphere of its predecessor, A Period of Adjustment tells the story of James Caldicott. His ruined marriage spurred him on to obey his estranged Brother's letter, which compelled him to take his house in the south of France. Upon discovering the tragic fate of his brother James, William, accompanied by his son Giles, attempts to rebuild his life only to find it being attacked from another, far too personal front.

It is an entertaining read emblazoned with Bogarde's...

Set in the shadow of Hollywood opulence - the gaudy wastes of Los Angeles - West of Sunset is a sharp and potent satire of movie-making America. However the excessive glitter is embedded in a deeper plot about a successful man's fall from grace.

Hugo Arlington, a celebrated young writer, had the power to destroy people. His widow, Alice, is not the only person to be haunted by his death and life, and gradually the truth about the dangerous games Hugo played comes to light, and the past comes catching up with the present.

West of Sunset is an amusing and rich...

'London guests staying hate it. Keeps them awake all night they complain. The bleating in the utter stillness. I heal with it, as you did.'

This epistolary collection finds Bogarde at his most honest and touching, engaging in conversation with a woman he has never met and whose only interest in him comes from the simple fact that he now happens to live in a house that she once owned. These letters provide an insight into the wit and intelligence of a great man without the stifling constraints of other literary forms. It presents us with a platform and a relationship that allows...