Erotic Vagrancy
Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
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Erotic Vagrancy
Narrated by:
Justin Avoth
Buy Now for £16.99
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Narrated by:
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Justin Avoth
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By:
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Roger Lewis
About this listen
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were a Sixties supercharged couple in an era of supercharged couples. As a pairing they were fantasy figures, impossibly desirable. Liz supple and soft, in perfumes and furs - yet with something demonic and lethal about her. Dick, in turn, with his ravaged, handsome face, looked as though lit by silver moonlight - poised to turn into a wolf.
Roger Lewis uses this glamorous and damaged pair as the starting point to tell the story of an age of excess: the freaks and groupies, the private jets and jewels and the yachts sailing in an azure sea; the magnificent bad taste and greed. It is about the clash of worlds: the filth and decay of South Wales and the grandeur and elegance of Old Hollywood; the fantasies we have about film stars and the fantasies the Burtons had about each other.
'Brilliantly funny . . . the book of the year' - Sunday Times
'By turns, funny, tragic, tender and vicious . . . a word-of-mouth sensation' - Guardian
(P) 2023 Quercus Editions Ltd©2023 Roger Lewis
Critic reviews
Thirteen years in the writing, Erotic Vagrancy doesn't only surpass every other biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton yet to appear, this rich and articulate book is also about celebrity, creativity, being flawed and being brilliant.
It is one of the very best biographies I have ever read. One of the best books about fame, desire, Hollywood and mid-to-late twentieth-century culture ever written. Inside which, brilliant, hilarious and sensitive insights on all
manner of subject fizz and froth. Magnificent, terrible, tragic, triumphant. (Stephen Fry)
manner of subject fizz and froth. Magnificent, terrible, tragic, triumphant. (Stephen Fry)
Lewis' prose, so electrifying, so funny, so sharp, so unsolemn, always going in unexpected directions, and with all those hilarious asides. Erotic Vagrancy gave me a week of pure joy
A hot thunderstorm of a book
Unputdownable (Tony Palmer)
Fascinating and hilarious . . . The joy is in the writing and the writing is joyful . . . The boldness of Lewis's writing is perfectly suited to the charisma of his subjects. (Hadley Freeman)
As extravagant and uncompromising as its badly behaved stars.
Lewis's magnum opus is a masterpiece in a genre of his own invention.
He is a genius writer . . . - brilliant, witty, exhilarating, and a fund of good stories.
A wonderful book . . . so deliciously written . . . Erotic Vagrancy is the biography of the year. Correction. It's the book of the year and then some
A dionysiac humdinger.
The 'battling Burtons' Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were the most glamorous celebrity couple ever. Passionately devoted to each other, the high life and - fatally - the bottle, this fascinating account of their love affair is gripping stuff.
Stupendous book
This eccentric, baroque and often funny book, full of riffs, asides and venom, is a study of megastardom, excess and monstrous personalities.
Tantalising
Excellent . . . Lewis has managed to create something bigger and more extravagant than a biography . . . Erotic Vagrancy manages to be both beautiful and ugly, romantic and putrid, which befits Burton and Taylor, their love, their style, their era which is long gone.
Glitters like one of Taylor's rubies
Bold, bitchy and bloody-minded. It is their masterpiece.
I started it on Friday and basically haven't done anything else but read it since, including over dinner last night. It is crazily good, hugely clever, monstrously opinionated, full of epic tangents, often mean (my God, so mean), completely gossipy, wildly, hilariously funny - like, put it down while you catch your breath funny - and brilliantly written. (India Knight)
Lewis is a brilliant writer; his acute eye for rich and fascinating detail is on open and shameless display here. (Colm Toibin)
superb reading and voice characterisations togethercwith a wpnderful story by Roger Lewis.
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Plaudits for Justin Avoth
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A long interesting account
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I was unaware of so many of the facts: The cost of creating Cleopatra, Elizabeth's 'wear each dress once only' regime, her diamond collection, drug addiction, animal obsession, filthy habitats, excesses and outrages. Neither had I any idea about Burton's rags-to-riches background from his success kicked off by an extremely creepy schoolmaster's staggering intervention, to promiscuity, betrayal, alcoholism, hints at murder, a hidden-away child. I was fascinated by Taylor & Burton's need for one another, hatred of one another, jet-setting lifestyle, bigger-than-royalty celebrity status, the Pope's intervention...
If you love beauty, glamour, Hollywood, sex, A-lister film stars, Italian film sets, true stories of absolute decadence and movies from a bygone age, you'll relish this.
What makes this book a wholly enjoyable Audible experience though, is Justin Avoth's fantastic narration. His impressions of all the stars mentioned in this book (of which there are many) are both camp and spot on. Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, Dirk Bogarde, James Mason, Kenneth Williams, John Gielgud... etc etc. I've got the voice of Richard Burton floating around inside my head still. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon could not have done better.
Maybe this book could have been edited down to... what, a third of it's length? No. The weightiness of it is what makes it the masterpiece it is. Thank you Roger Lewis, for 22 hours and 58 minutes of incredible anecdotes fantastically told. I might just start listening to it all over again.
Superb. A masterpiece. Brilliantly narrated.
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It’s no surprise to learn that Roger Lewis spent 13 years on this book as the breadth of research and detail is remarkable.
Burton and Taylor, together and apart, prove endlessly fascinating and Lewis makes their lives bounce off the page with a befitting verve and wicked humour.
I am inspired to watch the many films critiqued in this comprehensive and refreshing appraisal of their work, especially knowing now how much the background antics and angst of their lives were so often mirrored in those they portrayed on screen.
Brilliantly written and brilliantly read.
Superb narration of a superbly written book.
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