Erotic Vagrancy : Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

This magisterial biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton doubles as a captivating study in fame, creativity and grand passion, tracing the couple’s at times triumphant at times tragic relationship in a world filled with of jewels, vodka and yachts as well as violence and recrimination.

Thirteen years in the writing, Erotic Vagrancy doesn't only surpass every other biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton yet to appear, this rich, vital and passionately articulated book, which is as extravagant and wayward as its two subjects, is also about celebrity, creativity, being flawed, being brilliant, sexuality, the intermingling of a low and a highbrow existence, pride, insecurity, attraction and repulsion, and devilry.

We see Taylor the child actress exchanging dogs and horses for husbands. We see Burton emerging from the mists and brimstone of Wales to be the greatest theatrical animal of his generation. The pair come together in Rome during the making of Cleopatra, which gives Lewis the opportunity for a major farcical set-piece. We then enter a world of jewels and private jets, vodka, yachts and furs - the splendid vulgarity of the Sixties, where the narrative of Taylor and Burton becomes a Pop Art story.

Then, inevitably, it all goes wrong, with alcoholism, violence, recrimination and divorce ( twice ) - with Burton, whom Lewis depicts as a Faustus figure, damned by fame, dead at fifty-eight.

MEDIA REVIEWS

Thirteen years in the writing, Erotic Vagrancy doesn't only surpass every other biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton yet to appear, this rich and articulate book is also about celebrity, creativity, being flawed and being brilliant. - Belfast Telegraph

It is one of the very best biographies I have ever read. One of the best books about fame, desire, Hollywood and mid-to-late twentieth-century culture ever written. Inside which, brilliant, hilarious and sensitive insights on allmanner of subject fizz and froth. Magnificent, terrible, tragic, triumphant. - Stephen Fry

Lewis' prose, so electrifying, so funny, so sharp, so unsolemn, always going in unexpected directions, and with all those hilarious asides. Erotic Vagrancy gave me a week of pure joy - Craig Brown

A hot thunderstorm of a book - David Hare

Unputdownable - Tony Palmer

Fascinating and hilarious . . . The joy is in the writing and the writing is joyful . . . The boldness of Lewis's writing is perfectly suited to the charisma of his subjects. - Hadley Freeman, Sunday Times

As extravagant and uncompromising as its badly behaved stars. - Observer

Lewis's magnum opus is a masterpiece in a genre of his own invention. - The Times

He is a genius writer . . . - brilliant, witty, exhilarating, and a fund of good stories. - The Telegraph

A wonderful book . . . so deliciously written . . . Erotic Vagrancy is the biography of the year. Correction. It's the book of the year and then some - Mail on Sunday

A dionysiac humdinger. - Spectator (Duncan Fallowell Book of the Year)

The 'battling Burtons' Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were the most glamorous celebrity couple ever. Passionately devoted to each other, the high life and - fatally - the bottle, this fascinating account of their love affair is gripping stuff. - New Statesman

Stupendous book - Scotsman

This eccentric, baroque and often funny book, full of riffs, asides and venom, is a study of megastardom, excess and monstrous personalities. - Robbie Millen, The Times

Tantalising - Sunday Independent

Excellent . . . Lewis has managed to create something bigger and more extravagant than a biography . . . Erotic Vagrancy manages to be both beautiful and ugly, romantic and putrid, which befits Burton and Taylor, their love, their style, their era which is long gone. - Sight and Sound

Glitters like one of Taylor's rubies - Sunday Times

Bold, bitchy and bloody-minded. It is their masterpiece. - Sight and Sound

I started it on Friday and basically haven't done anything else but read it since, including over dinner last night. It is crazily good, hugely clever, monstrously opinionated, full of epic tangents, often mean (my God, so mean), completely gossipy, wildly, hilariously funny - like, put it down while you catch your breath funny - and brilliantly written. - India Knight, Home

Lewis is a brilliant writer; his acute eye for rich and fascinating detail is on open and shameless display here. - Colm Toibin, Guardian

I've never read anything like it! Roger Lewis's analysis, theories, cross referencing, flights of fancy and encyclopaedic detail, are nirvana for this detail obsessed reader! - Richard E Grant