Top

Private Faces and Public Places

On sale

25th November 2021

Price: £12.99

Select a format

Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781529373639

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

‘Modern classics: elegantly written and breathtaking in their honesty’ Daily Express

Siân Phillips has a long and celebrated career on both stage and screen. For the first time, her two bestselling volumes of memoir Private Faces and Public Places will be available as a single volume with a brand new foreword by the author.

With wonderful stories and unflinching candour, Private Faces and Public Places covers her life from its beginnings in the remote Welsh countryside, where life hadn’t changed for centuries, to finding herself at the epicentre of the acting world at its most glamorous alongside husband Peter O’Toole, whose career was about to take off with the spellbinding Lawrence of Arabia. Siân describes the mad and wonderfully impulsive times with O’Toole alongside the tempestuous, insecure, and often lonely periods in their marriage. Incredibly, it endures over 20 years.

When it ends, surprising even herself, she plunges straight into another marriage, with the much younger actor Robin Sachs. Emerging alone from her second marriage, triumphant and unrepentant, the story Siân tells ranks alongside the very best in show business.

Reviews

Sunday Times
'Magnificent'
Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph
'A fascinating read, easily one of the best autobiographies of the year'
Hugh Massingberd, Daily Telegraph
'A stimulating work of art . . . a rare bird indeed among "showbiz" books'
Mail on Sunday
'A delightful memoir, written with great warmth and freshness'