Dirk Bogarde may have convinced some people he was the perfect English gentleman, but there was little graciousness in his petulant reply to Russell Harty in a 1986 television interview: 'I'm still in the shell, and you haven't cracked it yet, honey.' The suave matinée idol turned skilled writer kept his inner self firmly under wraps.

In seeking to uncover it, John Coldstream has set himself a difficult task, particularly as time is not on his side. Bogarde has only been dead five years and already the carapace. Bogarde was not the sort of person whose professional career is strewn with revealing anecdotes. He did not