To the End of the World: Travels with Oscar Wilde

Description

They say that sometimes ghosts don't realise they're dead and wander around screaming because no one is paying them any attention. Well, in show business you may have been dead five years before you finally twig. You howl around the corridors of power while the elect march straight through. Then one day you catch yourself in a mirror and there is nothing looking back. In his highly anticipated third memoir, Rupert Everett tells the story of how he set out to make a film of Oscar Wilde's last days, and how that ten-year quest almost destroyed him. (And everyone else.) Travelling across Europe for the film, he weaves in extraordinary tales from his past, remembering wild times, freak encounters and lost friends. There are celebrities, of course. But we also meet glamorous but doomed Aunt Peta, who introduces Rupert (aged three) to the joys of make-up. In '90s Paris, his great friend Lychee burns bright, and is gone. While in '70s London, a 'weirdly tall, beyond size zero' teenage Rupert is expelled from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Unflinchingly honest and hugely entertaining, To the End of the World offers a unique insight into the 'snakes and ladders' of filmmaking. It is also a soulful and thought-provoking autobiography from one of our best-loved and most talented actors and writers.

Rupert Everett shot to fame with the film Another Country in 1984 and has been a hugely successful actor and writer for many years. His films include The Madness of King George III; My Best Friend's Wedding; Shrek II and III; Shakespeare in Love and St Trinians. His first memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, was a Sunday Times bestseller and its sequel, Vanished Years, won the Sheridan Morley Prize for Biography. His film of Oscar Wilde's last years, The Happy Prince, was released in 2018 to widespread acclaim.

A rude and uproarious new memoir about the vicissitudes of fame and his attempts to make a film about the last days of Oscar Wilde * The Times Books of the Year * Another actor who can really write is Rupert Everett. His latest memoir, To the End of the World, about making his Oscar Wilde film, is reliably hilarious - even if the joke is now always at his expense: "like a toothless old circus dog, I yap yes to everything", he writes, as he hoovers up "a couple of dry martinis to conjure up a bit of sloshed sparkle - the dregs of my star quality" * Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year 2020 * Both a caustic reflection on the iniquities of show business and an account of his decade-long efforts to bring Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince to the screen. The writing is as sparkling as the anecdotes are riotous: he stands up Joan Collins for dinner and throws up on Colin Firth * Guardian Books of the Year 2020 * The joy of Everett as a writer has always been his pitilessly clear-eyed perspective, especially of himself...Everett has become one of the most delightful writers about modern fame...He has a writing style as seductive as his youthful beauty...every sentence Everett writes rings with his personality, and it's a personality that has always been irresistible * Hadley Freeman, Guardian Book of the Day * Everett is wonderfully sharp, and alive to all the comical absurdities of the movie business...he turns out to be a masterly travel writer, with the magical ability to make a city or a building or a group of people burst into life in a few words...Like Everett's other books, To The End Of The World is also very funny and revealing about the shallow nature of stardom * Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday * This is tremendous * Rev. Richard Coles * Like its preceding volumes, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins and Vanished Years, it quivers with honesty, A-list gossip and sardonic prose...We should really start describing him as a writer who acts, rather than the other way round...He's brilliantly caustic on Hollywood and the march of time...."Why hadn't I realised I could write?" he asks of his younger self. The answer, probably, is simple. He needed those years of excess, hissy fits and humiliations to fuel his imagination * The Times * In a sharp, scabrous account of his lifelong love of Oscar, the actor again proves himself a masterly writer...it is just about everything you could want, at least in a memoir by an actor. We know, by now, that Everett is a deliciously gifted writer. Nothing and no one escapes his attention...However wasteful and capricious his first profession, we know that he is perfectly safe. The blank page will henceforth always be his. He is a writer to his (aching) bones * Rachel Cooke, Observer * His resilient energy, sharp-eyed intelligence and keen sense of the ridiculous, as well as his capacity for short-term enjoyment of life's sensual pleasures, infuse his writing with a warm glow...the sheer force of his personality is irresistible and there isn't a dull moment...anyone reading this shrewd and entertaining book is going to lend him an ear * Telegraph * This impeccably stylish and hilariously bitchy collection of anecdotes...Everett's story of a magnificently barmy obsession that leads him into some of the loveliest hotels in Europe * Financial Times * It's such a beautiful book...It's so beautifully written and it's just gorgeous * Graham Norton, the Graham Norton Show * Every page of this third volume of his memoirs sparkles. He writes with ready wit, fetching self-deprecation and a turn of phrase that brings places and people vividly to life. He can capture a character in a sentence or convey the fading grandeur of a hotel and city in a few lines...You hope there are more adventures to come and that Everett continues to chronicle them with the wit and panache that he displays here * Daily Express * A charming and witty account of a largely horrible experience, interspersed with lovely recollections of a more debauched past * Philip Hensher, Spectator * An amazing man. And such a good writer...This book is amazing * Chris Evans, The Chris Evans Breakfast Show * Such a brilliant writer * Janet Street-Porter, Loose Women * Witty and well observed, it's a must-read * Grazia * As Everett ricochets from Paris to Naples, Berlin to Venice in search of funding and locations, he captures the snakes-and-ladders world of international film finance. It takes a saintly forbearance to survive all the setbacks in the film's making, along with the stalwart support of loyal friends from Colin Firth to Emily Watson * Mirror * It is impossible to overstate just how brilliant this book is: fearless, soulful and so articulate that ever single page mesmerises....If Oscar was around today, this is the book that he'd be reading. * Attitude * To the End of the World is quite as brilliant as its two predecessors. It is sharp, camp, fearless, touching and very, very funny * The Oldie *