Byron Rogers’ latest collection of travel pieces follows the winning formula of his first book for Aurum, ‘An Audience with an Elephant’: in search of – and finding – a remarkable array of quirky, whimsical and singular individuals. But as well as such characters as the pensioner on a Saga holiday who decided to swim across the Amazon, this book sees for the first time Rogers meeting a number of undeniably famous people: Hollywood stars, legends of children’s radio serials he had idolised in childhood – even rock stars like Mick Jagger. But, as one might expect, Rogers’ encounters with a celebrity have their own unexpected outcomes. Burt Lancaster rants to him about trans sexuality. Rita Hayworth is most worried about her neighbour’s TV aerial. A retired star of the silent screen turns out to live in Henley-on-Thames. Rogers’ last book for Aurum, ‘The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail’ (1 85410 949 9) received excellent coverage and was reprinted twice; and his biography of J.L. Carr, ‘The Last Englishman’ reprinted four times and was hailed by Simon Jenkins as ‘a miniature masterpiece’.
Sobre o autor
Byron Rogers is a Welsh journalist, essayist and biographer. He has contributed to The Times, the Sunday Telegraph and the Guardian, and was once a speech writer for the Prince of Wales. He is also author of seven books published by Aurum, including: An Audience With an Elephant, one of several collections of his journalism; The Man Who Went into the West, a critically acclaimed biography of the iconic twentieth century Welsh poet, R. S. Thomas, which was awarded the James Tait Black Prize for Biography in 2007; and The Last Englishman, a biography of the quintessential Englishman and celebrated novelist J.L. Carr. Me: The Authorised Biography, was published in 2009. His most recent book is Three Journeys. He currently lives in Northamptonshire and Carmarthen.