Furious Love By Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

In the light of Dame Elizabeth's death this week I think it more than appropriate that I review a wonderful book that came out last year.  Subtitled Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and The Marriage of the Century, this was glorious old time Hollywood written at its best.
The writing and the narrative are just wonderful, they fairly zoom and in places you can feel the sizzle that these two engendered, it takes little to imagine why the Pope and the Vatican were so incensed with this love affair that started on the set of the multi-million dollar movie Cleopatra, many were hurt by it, both married to others at the time and Burton in particular fought valiantly to escape his passion for Elizabeth, Elizabeth not so much as she was married to Eddie Fisher! Finally the realised that to be together was all that could happened and so a relationship that was founded on passion, poetry, booze, pills, illness, expensive gifts and high living played out  until both forces were spent, divorce and then believe it or not remarriage but their demons would not allow them to live in peace and harmony and a second divorce resulted.
This book is gorgeous from its cover to its photos, to its well researched writing, the picture it paints is of lives well lived but perhaps ultimately not fulfilled.
This book will be out soon in paperback and is well worth a read.