Alec Guinness's 1995-1996 diary, My Name Escapes Me, was published to a standing critical ovation. People magazine loved its "understated elegance." Michiko Kakutani, in The New York Times, raved: "Utterly delightful. . . . One hopes . . . we may soon be treated to another installment."
Here it is, brimming with further extemporaneous opinions and careful reflections from the powerful intelligence and ironically observant eye that made Guinness such a fine and versatile actor. In A Positively Final Appearance, written from the summer of 1996 through 1998, Guinness--reinvigorated by a successful cataract operation--observes Britain in the tumultuous times of Princess Diana's death and Tony Blair's election as prime minister. Living a quintessentially English country life with his painter wife, he re-reads Dickens and Patrick O'Brian, experiments with Chinese cooking, marvels at the Hale-Bopp comet, and enjoys Baz Luhrmann's film William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet--while reflecting ruefully that the worst Romeo ever was "none other than me." These dispatches (acerbic or affectionate) on matters local, national, and cultural come from one of whom Vanity Fair recently remarked: "At 83, the Force is still with him."