The Other Elizabeth Taylor

I have admired Elizabeth Taylor’s novels for many years so I waited impatiently for the arrival of The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman. It’s the first ‘Persephone Life’ and handsomely produced. The book was planned as an authorised biography but Beauman decided publication must be postponed until Elizabeth Taylor’s husband John had died. Their children then objected to the book and disowned it. It’s not clear if this was because they didn’t like the truth being told about aspects of their mother’s life or because they felt there were things in the book that were not true. Controversy usually assists sales but sensation-seekers will not find much to excite them. The real problem with a life of Elizabeth Taylor is the lack of sources. She was intensely private, threw out many of her own papers before her death and insisted that her friend Robert Liddell destroy all the letters she had written to him. So there are no diaries and few reminiscences and the book is based largely on internal evidence from the novels (dangerous) and the letters which did survive: those written to ( Shock! )