The face behind the face we love

Dear Alec: Guinness at 75. Edited and Introduced by Ronald Harwood (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.95) Charlie Hall
THE immediate impression I got from this book was one of the comfort. It was like picking up a well-worn album of photographs in the full knowledge that there would only be lovely pictures of English scenes; the village fete, a cricket match, smiling faces.
It is a book to be read before going to sleep and you won't have any disturbing dreams because not only does this collection of anecdotes, this series of images make you happy that there should ever have been (and still be) a man like Alec Guinness, it never once makes you envious of the fact that you are not Alec
Guinness. I felt totally content to bask in the mellow glow of this man's successes and his colleagues' admiration, Alec Guinness is an "invisible man", we are told. As an actor it is very true. I'm sure that I'm not the first to confess that he remained invisible in most of his roles as the d'Ascoyne family in Kind Hearts and Coronets and I recall more of *sensation of his presence in films that I've seen than the actual characters that he has portrayed.
Ronald Harwood has done well in collecting an interesting selection of people to write short pieces about Alec Guinness. There are the film directors George Lucas who directed Guinness as "Master Warrior Ben Kenobi" in Star Wars, and Franco Zeffirelli who had him play the Pope in Brother Sun, Sister Moon. John Gielgud who remembers him as a very young actor "with a sad pierrot face and big ears . . .", Cyril Cussack and easily my favourite, Eileen Atkins who made her name in The Killing of Sister George and Shaw's St Joan who writes of Guinness as a beautiful, kind man and who ends her piece so utterly charming and genuine; ". . . and the fact that he does like me means a great deal to me".
Altogether, it's a very pleasant and inoffensive book. It gives me a nice picture of this great man, perfect for the bedside table. So I can now quote what Coral Browne says: "I turned my attention to the three books on the bedside table (an unmistakable touch), carer Lilly selected and inviting . . ." If Alec Guinness wasn't Alec Guinness, he would have "Dear Alec" on that table.