AN EXTRAORDINARY AND HEARTFELT ACCOUNT OF GROWING UP IN A FAMOUS BUT DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY

This beautifully produced memoir, featuring more than twenty of Alexander’s own artworks, gives a clear-eyed, unsentimental insight into a legendary acting family and Hollywood’s golden age

Born with a famous name to an unhappy marriage, Alexander Newley is the son of the Hollywood stars Joan Collins and Anthony Newley. Their life was one of almost unparalleled privilege and glamour but under the glossy veneer there was trouble: infidelity, insecurity and emotional trauma.

This book, written with humour and compassion, tells the story of Alexander’s nomadic childhood; the disintegration of his parents’ marriage; and his battle to make sense of the past. It is also a meditation on art, identity and inheritance, and a portrait of London and Hollywood during the swinging sixties and the seventies. Complementing Alexander’s vivid and razor-sharp prose are more than twenty of his own artworks depicting the people who played a pivotal role in his early years.

Alexander Newley is a leading contemporary artist on both sides of the Atlantic and his works form part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. This is his first book. He lives in Queen’s Park, London.