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“... These biographies of John Gielgud by Jonathan Croall and Sheridan Morley are quite hard to tell apart. They are of much the same size, bear handsome pictures of the actor in old age on the front of their dust-jackets, and are, inevitably, affectionate and indulgent towards their subject. As Dirk Bogarde remarked when Croall consulted him about the work in hand, ‘everybody adored him, so the book might make rather flat reading ...”

“... Sir John Gielgud is 75. To hear him talk or watch him on the stage he seems much younger, whereas his recollections of the lions of the Edwardian theatre ought to put him well past his century. It’s an elastic life because baby Gielgud was so quick off the mark, the famous nose soon round the edge of the pram observing the odd behaviour of his Terry uncles and aunts ...”

“... one suspects, very much worse than death in the mind of the ageing Eurosceptic Tory. We know who John Gielgud was – the greatest English speaker of his generation, the lyre of English verse – but his letters tell a story of who he was underneath all that, or perhaps because of being all that. At 23, we find him writing to his mother from Newcastle ...”

“... of the plot. Just don’t speak to the audience. I have always found this prohibition difficult. John Gielgud, who was in my first play, thought talking to the audience was vulgar. Then he was prevailed upon to try it and thereafter would seldom talk to anybody else. I understand this and even in my most naturalistic plays have contrived and relished ...”

“... of superannuated Pinter. There is always a war with real life. Storey describes a rehearsal with John Gielgud (as Harry) and Ralph Richardson (as Jack) of Home, his play about England and everyday madness. The actors are navigating their way around two chairs and a table. Storey starts by showing the two actors before segueing into what’s happening ...”

“... about his hero: these include Claire Bloom, Alexander Cohen, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Sir John Gielgud, Hugh Griffiths, Joseph Losey, James Mason, Vincente Minnelli, Mike Nichols, Rachel Roberts, Daphne Rye, Jean Simmons, and three of his wives, Sybil Christopher, Elizabeth Taylor and Susan Hunt. I particularly enjoyed the parenthesis Mr Ferris ...”

“... terror of the future, filled with anger, spleen and guilt, aware of swiftly approaching death.’ John Gielgud played Daddy and survived – which was more than the picture did. A plot like that would sink a battleship. That’s your opinion. What about the others? The Night Porter was about one of the inmates of Dachau or possibly Belsen. She falls in ...”

“... I ran away.’ I was never able to, and never even considered it. One day my mother announced that John Gielgud was coming to Cairo to perform Hamlet at the Opera House. ‘We must go,’ she said with infectious resolve, and indeed the visit was duly set up, although of course I had no idea who John Gielgud was. I ...”

“... about Richard II, was a huge West End hit in the early 1930s; it made the name of the young John Gielgud, who also directed; Ffrangcon-Davies was Queen Anne. Tey never managed to follow up its crazy success; Ffrangcon-Davies commissioned a play about Mary Queen of Scots, but it didn’t work because Tey didn’t like Mary – too emotional, too ...”

“... contributed to a no-nonsense, suck-it-and-see anti-intellectualism. For socialist playwrights like John Arden and Edward Bond, the consequence, in one case, is external and in the other a form of internal exile. But the most noted instance of the prophet rejecting his own country is the director Peter Brook who, having forged a glittering career in the British ...”

“... Rita Hayworth, Natalie Wood, Marlene Dietrich (drawn while posing, clearly), Simon Callow, John Gielgud and Ian McKellen. (My husband, David, incidentally, is related to Dietrich – on his mother’s side.) The screenwriters don’t include Dorothy Parker, although I’m fairly certain that Bachardy once did her portrait in black and ...”

“... my wristwatch and cigarette case – all of which I had given him’.Channon was warned by John Gielgud that his liaison with Rattigan was all too public, while Nigel Birch, a clever, sarcastic Tory MP, teased him about the silk shirt he wore with the embroidered initials ‘TR’. Channon was acquainted with Lord Berners and ‘his crazier ...”

“... Rudolf Schlichter. Works by Georg Grosz hung on the wall; Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin and John Heartfield were regulars. Brecht and his crowd were fascinated by America, by its new, brutal version of capitalism which was remaking the world, by its technology and its popular culture. The fascination found its way into his verse and his plays. He went ...”

“... acquired a patina of critical respectability, rather as if Sid James, with time, had turned into John Gielgud. It’s worth saying that whatever the excesses and incoherencies of Coppola’s Dracula, it is the work of an inventive and subtle movie imagination, which the Hammer films were not. Of course, we could disavow Gary Oldman if he weren’t so ...”