'Everybody loved him,' warned the late Dirk Bogarde, when Jonathan Croall talked to him about Gielgud: A Theatrical Life, 'so the book might make rather flat reading.' It turns out to be most satisfactory. Croall may not have the most sparkling style, but he is an adroit and sympathetic interviewer with a true researcher's relish for the unexpected.

'My work is my life and I have no real interest outside it,' said Gielgud. 'I'm just a silly emotional gubbins.' The key to his massive career, as Croall acknowledges, is rooted in his Terry inheritance. Especially the Terry tears. When he saw Barrie's Mary Rose as a boy, he declared, 'Wonderful! Wept buckets.' 'We had a jolly good blub' meant that a performance had gone well.

When he hit the West End in 1933 in Richard of Bordeaux and was earning £100 a week, he was recognised as 'a royal figure with the hereditary Terry radiance'. His house in Westminster was crammed with memorabilia. 'Don't open a drawer,' a friend advised, 'or Ellen Terry's teeth will fall out.'

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