Glamour Is Forever

Before I picked up this book, risking elbow strain from its hefty bulk (605 crammed pages), I was skeptical that there was anything new and original left to uncork about the epic, gaudy romance of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the roving monarchs of the jet age. I was mistaken.

Erotic Vagrancy, its title taken from a 1962 Vatican newspaper editorial condemning Burton and Taylor’s licentious carryings-on and the bad example it set for the laity, tells us loads that we didn’t know before and often more than we need to know, plunging the reader in a bacterial vat of boogie-woogie detail that will leave some gasping for relief. Certain biographers are taker-outers, others are putter-inners, and Lewis is the latter in excelsis.