Dancing and death

I thought at first that this was going to be a truly marvellous book, and in many ways it is, but I soon found that, in common with most modern biographies, it is too long, too detailed and there is too much talk about sex. It is hard to believe that non-professionals want quite so much description of ballets and ballet personalities long departed. Richard Buckle once shouted at Margot Fonteyn at the end of a long party, ‘Are you trying to tell me that ballet is a totally ephemeral art?’ ‘Yes, I am,’ replied Margot firmly.

That said, this is a gripping story, and there is not much that one can add to it. Meredith Daneman has left no stone unturned, even those Margot might have preferred to have remained undisturbed. The second half of the book is the most thrilling. The account of the shooting and crippling of Margot’s husband, Tito Arias, in 1964, in Panama, her reactions to it, the subsequent story up to his death and her own terrible illness is brilliantly done. The only time Daneman is led astray is by Tito’s relations, when she quotes them as saying that his shooting was part of a political conspiracy and not a crime passionnel as we poor romantic English like to think. I can only tell you that when she got back from Panama Margot said to me exactly what she had said to Joan Thring: ‘I can’t understand it, they were our best friends, and we had dinner with Jimenez and his wife the night before I left.’ At the mention of the word ‘wife’ I knew exactly what had happened and so, for a ghastly moment, I think did she. She never mentioned the subject of who shot Tito again.