Nan A. Talese Charlie chaplin: a brief life, hardcover/peter ackroyd

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A brief yet definitive new biography of one of film's greatest legends: perfect for readers who want to know more about the iconic star but who don't want to commit to a lengthy work.

He was the very first icon of the silver screen and is one of the most recognizable of Hollywood faces, even a hundred years after his first film.

But what of the man behind the moustache? Peter Ackroyd's new biography turns the spotlight on Chaplin's life as well as his work, from his humble theatrical beginnings in music halls to winning an honorary Academy Award.

Everything is here, from the glamor of his golden age to the murky scandals of the 1940s and eventual exile to Switzerland.

There are charming anecdotes along the way: playing the violin in a New York hotel room to mask the sound of Stan Laurel frying pork chops and long Hollywood lunches with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

This masterful brief biography offers fresh revelations about one of the most familiar faces of the last century and brings the Little Tramp vividly to life.

About the Author PETER ACKROYD is the author of London: The Biography , Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination , Shakespeare: The Biography , and Thames: The Biography .

He has written acclaimed biographies of T.

Eliot, Dickens, Blake, and Sir Thomas More as well as several successful novels.

He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the South Bank Award for Literature.