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Alfred Hitchcock rigorously controlled his public image, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring out all others. In this gripping short biography, Peter Ackroyd wrests the directors chair back from the master of control to reveal a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashed a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances throughout Hitchcocks story, just as the director did in his own films: Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, James Stewart and, perhaps most famously of all, Tippi Hedren, who endures cuts and bruises from a fearsome flock of real birds. Perceptive and intelligent, Alfred Hitchcock is a fascinating look at one of the most revered directors of the twentieth century. Read more Continue reading Read less REVIEW "A smart, fluent overview of the directors life and art, and the mysterious dynamic between the two." - The New York Times "A masterful book on the Master of Suspense: like all good movies, its over too soon." - The Seattle Times "Superb, insightful. . . . [A] deft and moving biography." - The Guardian "A character portrait . . . guided by a novelists skills of characterization and texture." - The New York Times Book Review "Ackroyd masters the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock." - Vanity Fair "Irresistible." - The Independent (London) "Immaculate and phenomenally readable." - The Buffalo News "As packed with anecdotes as an after-dinner speech. Everyone, it seems, had a story about Hitch, most of them ghoulish." - Newsweek "Well written . . . and unusually well attuned to the religious element [of Hitchcocks movies]." - Financial Times EXCERPT. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 1 the child who never cried Alfred Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 on the floor above his fathers shop at 517 High Road, Leytonstone; Leytonstone was by the time of his birth a soft forgetful suburb, sweltering in summer and sullen in winter. It was marked by a sense of vacancy, deriving from the time when it was simply a hamlet on the Roman road to London. It was situated five miles to the northeast of the city, and at the time of Hitchcocks birth was still nominally part of Essex, but the vast roar of London was coming ever closer. In 1856 the Great Eastern Railway arrived and Leytonstone soon became a "dormitory town" filled with the modestly affluent who made their way each morning into the City and its environs. William Hitchcock was a greengrocer, selling everything from cabbages to turnips. It was as busy as any other high road, with horses and carts and carriages passing incessantly; the scent of bananas ripening, and the musty dusty odour of potatoes, were mingled with the keener stench of horse dung. The pervasive smell of manure was in fact only alleviated by the arrival of the electric tram in 1906, an event that Hitchcock vividly remembered. A photograph was taken of him and his father outside the family business on what looks to be the recently established Empire Day; he is astride a horse, no doubt the one that brought the produce from Covent Garden market. William Hitchcock was a successful merchant, whose business soon expanded, and Hitchcock told one biographer that "I remember my father going to work in a dark suit with a very white starched shirt and a dark tie." In this, at least, the son came to resemble the father. William Hitchcock was also a highly nervous man, who suffered from various neuralgic conditions such as skin lesions. Emma Hitchcock was by all accounts also smartly dressed, meticulous and dignified; like most ­lower-­middle-­class housewives, Hitchcocks mother took great delight in cleaning and polishing the appurtenances of the home. She was also adept at preparing family meals, a process she immensely enjoyed. Hitchcock claimed he was told that, as a baby and small child, he never cried. Yet he also adverted to his terror when, as an infant in the cradle, a female relative put her face too close to his own and uttered baby noises. He also remarked that when a baby is about three months of age, the mother will try and scare it; it is an experience that supposedly both of them enjoy. On another occasion he recalled his mother saying "Boo!" at him when he was six months old. Even if he never cried, he was not devoid of fear. He had an older brother, called William after his father, and an older sister, Ellen, known as "Nellie"; but they seem to have left no lasting impression on his life. The Hitchcocks were a deeply Catholic family, with three of his grandparents Irish Catholics amongst whom religion was instinctive and almost primordial. His father called him "my lamb without a spot," and Hitchcock himself remembered standing at the foot of his mothers bed at the end of the day to recite his adventures or misadventures; it was a form of familial confession. The family moved down to Limehouse when Hitchcock was six or seven. Limehouse had become an integral aspect of the East End of London by the latter part of the seventeenth century, when it harboured a population of some 7,000 with close connections to the river. These were the men and boys who went down to the sea in ships. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was one of the most important centres for shipbuilding in London. So now the boy can truly be claimed as a Londoner and even, by the common consent of the time, a cockney. A Chinese colony had moved into Limehouse twenty years before his own arrival, and provided another distinctive colour in Hitchcocks boyhood world. William Hitchcock had expanded his business by purchasing two fishmonger shops in the aptly named Salmon Lane; the family lived above one of them, at number 175. The lane was a few yards north of Limehouse Basin and the Thames, so th



About the Author

Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd, (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William Blake, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More, he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. He is noted for the volume of work he has produced, the range of styles therein, his skill at assuming different voices and the depth of his research.He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.



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