A Postillion Struck by Lightning - Dirk Bogarde

Advantages: Invaluable help
Disadvantages: Books rather flimsy

...'The Postillion Has Been Struck By Lightning'. This phrase has entered the language as a verbal eccentricity, the rather odd opening entry in one of the first published foreign language phrasebooks in Regency times. Perhaps it’s not as ludicrous as at first it seems. Consider, if you were doing the Grand Tour in 1800, rattling through some little Alpine mountain village, and a dreadful storm broke out, you might well want to tell the indigenous populace if a bolt from above had finished off your coachman. I have a wonderful collection of phrase books. My favourite has to be a French one from the 1920s, which contains such memorable phrases as: Do not starch my cummerbund. This wine cooler has grit in it. Bring me another. Polish my dancing pumps. (Note the autocratic omission of ‘please’). Another great one is an Italian phrase... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: I didn't buy the book.
Disadvantages: None, I can sell it (hopefully).

...When you think of Dirk Bogarde (in real life Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde, 1921 - 1999), do you think of the actor, the writer or the painter? Maybe of all three and maybe just in that order. He starred in more than sixty films, published seven volumes of his autobiography and six novels and a collection of his journalism. About his paintings I can´t say much, I only know that he made the cover illustrations of his novels himself. In the novel ´Jericho´, William Caldicott, an English writer, ´I write the kind of books that people leave behind on airplanes´, gets a parcel from his brother James with a key and a letter, telling him that he can have his house in France in which he lived for some years as a painter, as he no longer needs it. He announces that he is going to disappear, ´drift into the blue´, ´Not a sudden impulse... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: On cassette tape, read by the author himself
Disadvantages: 6 cassettes may become muddled by a blind user

...Tape 1 exceeded my expectations of the book. It is colloquial and frank. Dirk Bogarde's lifestyle, his likes and dislikes are revealed. Even more interestingly, it starts off in England, in a sunny garden, and promises to biograph Bogarde's every journey through the 'Movie' world (although I had previously guessed that I 'knew' it already). Mrs X, the lady to whom the letters are addressed, is not immediately revealed and the book promises that she and Bogarde never met. You will find out pieces about Mrs X through the one-sided letters; the lack of absolute knowledge of the content of the letters, received by Bogarde, become mysteries to be fathomed out by each listener individually; with each new reply. My first thoughts on the book had been that it would be quite sufficient to listen to odd letters, but tape 1 proved to me... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful