Profiles

Profiles Synopsis

The only collection of Tynan's star-studded profiles, selected and edited by his widow and biographer, Kathleen Tynan, with a foreword by Simon Callow. Kenneth Tynan was the 20th century's most influential writer on theatre and performance. Over the course of his life he wrote a series of brilliant and incisive pen-portraits of many of the most significant performers and writers of his day.

Amongst the fifty assembled here are profiles of actors such as Garbo, Bogart, Cagney, Olivier and Gielgud; the directors George Cukor, Peter Brook and Joan Littlewood; writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams; and comedians as diverse as Mel Brooks, Eric Morecambe, W.C. Fields and Lenny Bruce. 'We had thought to have seen the last of Tynan. Now, suddenly, a new volume appears:

• a collection of fifty profiles of the famous... More than a third of the pieces are new - at least in book form - which in itself is cause enough for dancing... One does not have to like theatre to cherish these pieces... It is a book to savour in small doses, the better to postpone the sadness of reaching its end&apos
• Hugh Leonard&apos
• Tynan was unique in that he combined the soul of an artist with the descriptive skill of a journalist... He was an ideal profile writer, as this book eloquently testifies&apos
• Michael Billington, Guardian