How One Generation of British Actors Changed the World

Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down

Jaw-dropping tales of legendary excess and bad behaviour from the British stars of the 1950s and 60s, from the author of the bestselling Hellraisers and Hollywood Hellraisers.

A rollicking good read ... a vivid snapshot of this exciting time

The undeniable fun of this book lies in the accounts of everyone's youthful misbehaviour - hell-raising, as it used to be called

Ahighly partial but persuasive account ... pacy and well-written

Robert Sellers is the author of the bestselling Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed, Hollywood Hellraisers and An A-Z of Hellraisers. He has also written biographies on Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a history of the George Harrison/Monty Python film company HandMade, and the controversial Battle for Bond, which for a time was banned by the family of Ian Fleming. He was a regular contributor to Empire, Total Film, Independent, SFX and Cinema Retro and has contributed to a number of television documentaries, including Channel 4's The 100 Best Family Films.

Alan Bates, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Robert Shaw and Terence Stamp: They are the most formidable acting generation ever to tread the boards or stare into a camera, whose anti-establishment attitude changed the cultural landscape of Britain. 
 
This was a new breed, many culled from the working class industrial towns of Britain, and nothing like them has been seen before or since. Their raw earthy brilliance brought realism to a whole range of groundbreaking theatre from John Osborne's Look Back in Anger to Joan Littlewood and Harold Pinter and the creation of the National Theatre. And they ripped apart the staid, middle-class British film industry with kitchen-sink classics like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar before turning their sights on international stardom: Connery with James Bond, O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, Finney with Tom Jones and Caine in Zulu. 
 
Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down brings alive the trail-blazing period of theatre and film from 1956-1964 through the vibrant energy and exploits of this revolutionary generation of stars who bulldozed over austerity Britain and paved the way for the swinging 60s. What Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls did for American cinema writing so Don't Let the Bastards will do for the British cinema.

A Comprehensive Compendium of Outrageous Insobriety

An A-Z of Hellraisers

This quirky and anecdote-driven A-Z compendium celebrates the most outrageous, depraved, tortured and eccentric hellraisers the world has ever seen.

Contains some hair-raising anecdotes and some priceless one-liners

Robert Sellers is the author of the bestselling Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed and Hollywood Hellraisers. He has also written biographies on Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a history of the George Harrison/Monty Python film company HandMade, and the controversial Battle for Bond, which for a time was banned by the family of Ian Fleming. He was a regular contributor to Empire, Total Film, Independent, SFX and Cinema Retro and has contributed to a number of television documentaries, including Channel 4's The 100 Best Family Films.

An A-Z of Hellraisers is the last word on inebriated misbehaviour, and the miscreant mob in this whopper of a book constitute the most amazing grouping to see print: from Alexander the Great, whose drunken revelries once ended with the destruction of an entire city; to W. C. Fields, who passed critical judgement on a brass band by urinating over them from a hotel balcony; Dylan Thomas, who drove a sports car onto Charlie Chaplin's private tennis court; to Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, suffocating on his own vomit after consuming forty measures of vodka - what a night out that was! 
 
This hilarious volume makes for an ideal bedside companion or pub reading fodder, as it scrutinises and salutes these glorious individuals, from Winston Churchill to Keith Moon, George Best to Ernest Hemingway, Wild Bill Hickok to Sam Peckinpah, Ozzy Osbourne to Errol Flynn. Just thank God we didn't have to live next door to any of them.

The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson

Hollywood Hellraisers

Robert Sellers traces the intertwining lives and careers of movie mavericks Brando, Hopper, Beatty and Nicholson in this remarkable follow-up to the acclaimed Hellraisers.

The anecdotees alone are enough to recommend this ... intertwined with the shenanigans of these prodigious talents is a fascinating history of the wild side of Sixties and Seventies Hollywood

Compared to the slavering slop served up in today's celeb rags, this is industrial-strength juice.

Robert Sellers is a former stand-up comedian and the author of the bestselling Hellraisers. He has also written biographies of Sting, Tom Cruise, two appreciations of the work of Sean Connery and the definitive book on The Pythons, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. He was a regular contributor to Empire, Total Film, Independent, SFX and Cinema Retro and has contributed to a number of television documentaries, including Channel 4's The 100 Best Family Films.

'I don't know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I'm going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.' Marlon Brando 
'I should have been dead ten times over. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.' Dennis Hopper 
'The best time to get married is noon. That way, if things don't work out, you haven't blown the whole day.' Warren Beatty 
'You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.' Jack Nicholson 
 
They're the baddest bad asses Hollywood has ever seen: Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. These are men for whom rules did not apply, men for whom normal standards of behaviour were simply too wearisome to worry about. These are men who brawled, boozed, snorted and shagged their way into legend-hood - but along the way they changed acting and the way movies were made forever. 
 
Hollywood Hellraisers is a whistle-stop tour of jaw-dropping sexual activity, misbehaviour of an Olympic standard, all-out excess and genuine madness. It's a wonder Hollywood survived.

The Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O'Toole and Reed

Hellraisers

An extremely entertaining biography of four charismatic and much-loved actors: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed. Robert Sellers follows their stories through five decades of boozing, brawling and braggadocio.

Sellers' biography is a jaw-dropping account of their twisted, tortured, politically incorrect lives

Robert Sellers gleefully follows the seedy lives of the four liver-abusing actors as they drink, brawl and shag their way through the decades into eventual oblivion

The best book we've ever read involving binge drinking, botched stage entrances, Hollywood floozies and British movie stars . . . Sometimes the form of a piece so perfectly fits its content you can actually hear the angels of accordance purr. Such is the case with Hellraisers . . . The sprightly smash 'n dash of the prose so wonderfully captures the wanton belligerence of both bingeing and stardom you almost feel the guys themselves are telling the tales

Unputdownable ... Sports book of the half-century, you might even say

Robert Sellers is a former stand-up comedian and the author of biographies of Sting, Tom Cruise, two appreciations of the work of Sean Connery and the definitive book on The Pythons: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Robert was a regular contributor to Empire, Total Film, The Independent, SFX and Cinema Retro and has contributed to a number of television documentaries, including Channel 4's The 100 Best Family Films.

'God put me on this earth to raise sheer hell.' Richard Burton 
'I was a sinner. I slugged some people. I hurt many people. And it's true, I never looked back to see the casualties.' Richard Harris 
'Booze is the most outrageous of all drugs, which is why I chose it.' Peter O'Toole 
'I don't have a drink problem. But if that was the case and doctors told me I had to stop I'd like to think I would be brave enough to drink myself into the grave.' Oliver Reed 
 
This is the story of four of the greatest thespian boozers who ever walked - or staggered - off a film set into a pub. It's a story of drunken binges of near biblical proportions, parties and orgies, broken marriages, drugs, riots and wanton sexual conquests. They got away with it because of their extraordinary acting talent and because the public loved them. They were truly the last of a breed, the last of the movie hellraisers.

James Hogg

Robert Sellers

The Authorized Biography of Kenny Everett

Spontaneous, hilarious, irrepressible and, of course, trailblazing - Kenny Everett was revolutionary in television and radio comedy. Chris Evans, Chris Moyles, Rob Brydon and Steve Wright have all cited Kenny as a huge influence on their work - even the great Spike Milligan called him a genius. It was Kenny who developed the radio show format with which we are so familiar today: a mix of music, jingles, funny voices and sound effects. When he seamlessly made the move to television in the seventies, he created unforgettable characters such as Sid Snot, Cupid Stunt and Marcel Wave. 
 
Rarely seen without a smile on his face in public, in reality, Kenny was a deeply insecure man who suffered severe bouts of depression. He also struggled with his sexuality, only coming out to the public in 1985. Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, Kenny died in 1995. 
 
This in-depth and affectionate biography has been fully authorised by Kenny's family and contains original interviews with Kenny's sister, Kate and with his former wife, Lee, as well as entertainment figures such as Barry Cryer, Cliff Richard, Chris Tarrant and Paul Gambaccini. Packed with fabulous stories about the highs and lows of Kenny's life, his great friendships with The Beatles and Freddie Mercury, this is a book that any fan of comedy and entertainment must read.

Robert Sellers

Books by Robert Sellers

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