THEATRE PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK WHY the late Sir Ronald Harwood allowed me — a specialist in Victorian rogues — to write his biography. I have to admit they have a point.
Before meeting him in January 2014, I had never seen one of his plays, nor had I even watched the 1981 film adaptation of his most celebrated work, The Dresser, starring Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. Practically my only first-hand knowledge of his prolific output was The Pianist, which won him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2003. Justly deserved, then, was his brusque reply to my warm words of greeting — he said I was a “damned fool”.
Had I not also read a few pages of Lady Elizabeth Longford’s two-volume biography of the Duke of Wellington, I think all would have been lost. A mumbled reference to this book, however, transformed the irritable, elderly playwright into a far more approachable figure. Before I had even sat down, he recounted how the aged duke used the same words to dismiss an obsequious stranger who, having helped him across the road, said what an honour it was to have assisted the victor of Waterloo. Suddenly I felt welcome; we had shared our first joke. Only
