Blessings in Disguise Hardcover – February 12, 1986 by Alec Guinness
 
The long-awaited autobiography of one of the greatest actors of our day - a memoir that in its scrupulous intelligence and accuracy of observation, its modesty mingled with wild and dancing humor, and its sweet idiosyncrasy, is pure Guinness.
The "Blessings" Sir Alec counts are characteristically - the people who have deeply affected his life. Here are brilliant portraits of Ralph Richardson (Guinness was never certain precisely what Richardson believed in, except motorcycles and gin, until "on one occasion he rose to his feet, stood at attention and raised his beaker in a military-style toast. 'To Jesus Christ. What a splendid chap!'" ...); John Gielgud, who nurtured the young Alec 's talent with not-always-tactful generosity ("I can't think why you want to play big parts. Why
don't you stick to the little people you do so well?"); Edith Evans in her flawed majesty; Sybil Thorndike, Lewis Casson, Tyrone Guthrie - and a rich and strange supporting cast including Martita Hunt, all champagne and high-colonic irrigations, who gave Sir Alec his first acting lessons under the delusion that he must be one of the Guinnesses; Ernest Milton, arguably the greatest Hamlet of the century; and Edith Sitwell, terrorizing the Sesame and Imperial Pioneer Ladies Club (after the author dared disagree with her about Beethoven, she pronounced his doom: "Alec Guinness is not a Plantagenet"...). Here are Evelyn Waugh in church and Bernard Shaw at lunch; Vivien Leigh bewitching an admiral; Ernest Hemingway being underwhelmed by Noel Coward; Ernie Kovacs versus Fidel Castro;
and Grace Kelly and the twenty-year "war" with a tomahawk... And in telling us about these people, Sir Alec tells us about himself. We see the bewildered, sometimes terrified child ("My birth certificate registers me as Alec Guinness de Cuffe, born in Marylebone, London, 2nd April 1914 ... my father's name is left a speculative blank ") ... the chance treat (an invitation
to the theatre - an unimagined luxury) that decides his future ... the young Guinness taking his first steps (and slips) as an actor, looking like Dickens's pale young gentleman, Mr. Herbert Pocket, the appealing vulnerable innocent with the triangular grin and the outstanding ears. We see the unfolding careerfirst on the stage, then in film ... the wonderfully sustaining marriage... Sir Alec's war (the relevant chapter is called "Damage to the Allied Cause," and one can see why) ... the
long (and extraordinarily compelling) journey towards the Catholic Church (clinched by a bargain struck with God). And he writes about his sense of life now - in this moving, hilarious, entrancing book, an autobiography to celebrate.

With 16 pages of photographs


"The wittiest, most elegant memoir to come out of the theatre
in years."
-London Sunday Times
"A book so wise, hilarious and elegant that no review can do
justice to the richness of its content and the sparkle of its style.
It is, without question, the best book by an actor for several
decades."
-James Roose-Evans
"This is a marvellous Guinness record ... of a great period in
the British theatre. On Guinness himself it is marvellous in a
different way. It presents a wholly likeable man, brave in war,
modestly brilliant in peace, rare in faith and optimism, boasting
of only one thing: 'I am unaware of ever having lost a
friend.' As for his talent, he must, with such modesty, leave the
boosting to the millions of us who cherish it."
-Anthony Burgess, Observer
 
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