Roger Lewis | |
---|---|
Born | Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales | 26 February 1960
Occupation | Academic, biographer, journalist |
Education | Bassaleg School, Newport |
Alma mater | University of St Andrews; Magdalen College, Oxford |
Roger Lewis (born 26 February 1960) is a Welsh academic, biographer and journalist. [1] [2]
Lewis was born in Caerphilly, Glamorgan in 1960. He was raised in Bedwas, Monmouthshire, and educated at Bassaleg School in Newport. He then attended the University of St Andrews, graduating MA, then Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained the MLitt degree, both with first class honours. He became a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1984. [1] [3]
Lewis has contributed literary journalism to the Daily Express, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. [4] He has written biographies of Peter Sellers (1994), [5] Charles Hawtrey (2001), Anthony Burgess (2003), and Laurence Olivier (2007). [1] His book on Sellers was dramatized by HBO as The Life and Death of Peter Sellers , which won a Golden Globe Award [3] and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. [6] Seasonal Suicide Notes (2009) chronicles five years of the author's life. [4] It was followed up by a second volume of "dyspeptic musings", What am I Doing Here? My Years as Me, in 2012. [7] Erotic Vagrancy, his massive joint biography of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, took him 13 years to complete, and was published to generally positive reviews in October 2023. [8]
Following the publication of his Burgess biography, Blake Morrison declared himself "appalled by Roger Lewis's 20-year quest to destroy Anthony Burgess". [9] In defense, Lewis told Stephen Moss: "What I was trying to do with all my biographies was find a form that would suit the subject matter...Anthony Burgess was a great charlatan, so the book is full of all these mock-scholarly footnotes. I thought I'd pulled it off, and then the reviews came out and they were homicidal". [4]
Writing a book review for the Daily Mail in August 2011, Lewis expressed a dislike of the Welsh language, calling it an "appalling and moribund monkey language". Plaid Cymru politician Jonathan Edwards reported Lewis's comments to the police and to the Press Complaints Commission. [10] [11]
In 2014 comments about lesbians Lewis made in a Spectator article led to publishers Biteback Publishing withdrawing an offer of a book deal. [12] [13]
Lewis is married - to Anna, an educational psychologist - with three sons, and lives in Hastings, with a holiday apartment in Bad Ischl, Austria. He is a lover of good art and bullfighting. [3]
Peter Sellers was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show. Sellers featured on a number of hit comic songs, and became known to a worldwide audience through his many film roles, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series.
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German filmmaker and playwright, who is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals. He has also received a BAFTA Award and been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award.
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was a British writer and composer.
Richard Lester Liebman is a retired American film director based in the United Kingdom, famous for his comedic and campy style of shooting movies and for his work in both US and UK cinema.
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members was ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
Robert Dennis Harris is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, his fame rests upon his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His most recent works centre on contemporary history.
Anthony Frederick Blunt, styled Sir Anthony Blunt from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
Scandal is a 1989 British historical drama film, directed by Michael Caton-Jones. It is a fictionalised account of the Profumo affair that rocked the government of British prime minister Harold Macmillan. It stars Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler and John Hurt as Stephen Ward, personalities at the heart of the affair.
Miranda Jane Seymour is an English literary critic, novelist and biographer of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Jean Rhys among others. Seymour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She elected to resign from the Royal Society of Literature in December 2023. She was formerly married to Andrew Sinclair, and Anthony Gottleib and is now married to Ted Lynch.
Anthony Burgess: A Life is the title of a biography of the novelist and critic Anthony Burgess (1917–93) by Roger Lewis.
Morgan Goronwy Rees was a Welsh journalist, academic and writer.
Michael Keith Billington is a British author and arts critic. He writes for The Guardian, and was the paper's chief drama critic from 1971 to 2019. Billington is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008).
This article is about the particular significance of the year 1942 to Wales and its people.
Duncan Fallowell is an English novelist, travel writer, memoirist, journalist and critic.
Mortlake Crematorium is a crematorium in Kew, near its boundary with Mortlake, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It opened in 1939, next to Mortlake Cemetery.
Michael Edgar Oliver was a BBC broadcaster, writer and journalist on classical music.
A bibliography of reference material associated with the James Bond films, novels and genre.
Frances Wilson is an English author, academic, and critic.
This is a summary of 1943 in music in the United Kingdom.
Ronald Bergan was a South African-born British writer and historian. He was contributor to The Guardian and lecturer on film and other subjects as well as the author of several books including biographies.