... Strict maverick COMPILED BY PETER HEPPLE Because he has played so many vividly physical characters on stage and a series of villains in films, Steven Berkoff presents a rather frightening image. But his autobiography Free Association (Faber and Faber, £15.99) is revealing in that, although he is not exactly a pussy cat, he has an extraordinarily sensitive side which comes out of both his ...

... 'Bum Actor' is ready good By Peter Hepple Michael Sheard subtitles his book Yes, Mr Bronson (Summersdale, 46 West Street, Chichester, West Sussex P019 1RP, £6.99) Memoirs of a Bum Actor. Not a term, one might think, that the young and earnest might take to. But one sees what he means. It is meant to refer to those who take acting life as it comes, like Sheard himself, who won an award at ...

... BRITS ON BROADWAY Elizabeth Sharland has hit on a neat idea with her theatrical guides, though I feel they would be more useful in pocket size rather than full-page hardback format. She has already tackled London, now she does New York in The British on Broadway (Barbican Press, £12.95). Her style is agreeably discursive but seems to go off at tangents in what is presumably an attempt to put ...

... BLAZING A TRAIL Edwin o sachs is one of the lesser-known names in theatre architecture, possibly because he did not himself design a London theatre. The title of the memoir, Edwin 0 Sachs: Architect Stage hand, Engineer and Fireman, edited by David Willmore (Theatresearch, £20) actually sums up the career of this remarkable man, who died in 1919 when he was only 49, never having received all ...

... MORE MONROE One might have thought that everything one could possibly want to know about Marilyn Monroe had already been written. But Barbara Leaming has unearthed a good deal of new material in her biography, simply called Marilyn Monroe (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £20). Much of it relates to her early life, from which it is easy to determine the seeds of what one has to call her self ...

... TV MISNOMER The Ultimate TV Guide would have details of every television programme ever made, and even if it stuck to only the English- speaking programmes would probably require sufficient vol umes to fill a bookshelf. So Jon E Lewis and Penny Stempels Ultimate TV Guide (Orion, £16.99 paperback) is something of a misnomer, though it is fine for compilers of pub quizzes and makes agreeable ...

... VOICE OF SUCCESS Martin Jarvis has come a long way since he first became interested in the theatre at the Whitgift School, Croydon, though he was so tongue-tied in those days that in his first role absolutely nothing came out when he opened his mouth. Today he is one of the few actors who makes a large part of his living through his voice, main ly as a reader of books on tape. In Acting ...

... of the name Suvi Raj Grubb, for he is one or our most distinguished record producers. But they may not know much about his background or even his credentials for the job. The gap is remedied by this sunny- natured book of reminiscences by Grubb, whose birthplace. South India, might seem unlikely for one who is so steeped in the Western classical tradi tion. But this is in itself illustrative ...

... Gielgud's direction Stage Directions, by John Gielgud (Heinemann Educational Books ei.S5) Though on the short side, John Gielgud's Stage Directions, which has been reissued as a paperback, is one of the most absorbing theatre essays of the day. This is because a great actor is able to convey, tersely, clearly and colourfully views and feelings about his craft as well as about other ...

... From Showboat to Novello The Theatre of P. G. Wodehouse. By David A. Jansen. Batsford £6.95 Through musicals and revue, the theatre of the first four or five decades of this century gave far more scope than it does today for the artfulness and invention of writers of diverting stories to go with music, sketches, lyrics and dialogue of wit, both popular and sophisticated. And among tnose who ...

... be said fo the proposition that Darryl Francis Zanuck was the most brilliant and dynamic of all the legendary producers of Hollywood. He combined the flair of the born capitalist with the incisive judgment of a top journalist. He began in films as a writer and could churn out stories with astonishing speed, at one early stage in his career using three or four pseudonyms at the same time. He ...

... imaginary memoir, Samuel Charters, one of the best American writers on jazz and the blues, has written a biography of Jelly Roll Morton in the first person, allegedly based on an after-hours conversation at the Jungle Inn, Washington, D.C. in 1940, a year before Morton died. It is a bracing and original way of conveying the life and times of a boastful Creole from New Orleans who claimed to ...