Orson Welles: the road to Xanadu

Abstract

A vast, magnificent book about a vast, magnificent man, the first volume of Simon Callow's biography takes us from Welles' birth and prodigious boyhood to Citizen Kane. Pronounced a genius from the age of two, by ten Orson Welles was an artist, an actor and a poet, by thirteen - when he was already six foot tall - he was directing theatre and reviewing opera. At sixteen Welles set off to travel round Ireland on a donkey; he ended up in Dublin at The Gate Theatre and became, overnight, a star. A star he remained, a brilliant actor and director and a supremely talented writer. Simon Callow writes with great insight and refreshing verve, of Welles' career in the theatre, in radio (the notorious broadcast of The War of the Worlds, and finally in the cinema, where at the age of twenty-three, with no previous experience in the medium, Welles made the greatest film the cinema has ever seen, Citizen Kane.

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