At first the closeted world of Gielgud with its fears of prosecution and scandal is

At first, the closeted world of Gielgud, with its fears of prosecution and scandal, is reproduced in Sher’s embarrassments and timidity. Then, after the 1970s ritual of coming out, Sher enjoys some openly gay abandon before settling down with his partner, the director Greg Doran, who is always at his side in this autobiography.Because sex sells books, and there’s already a shelf-load of work on Gielgud, Sheridan Morley’s effort has been given much-needed column inches by bold promises of sensational sexual revelations. Oddly enough, they are not about Gielgud, but another theatrical knight, Sir Alec Guinness, who was arrested in 1946 for a homosexual act in a public lavatory.Using that incident as a publicity ploy is both a bit distasteful and slightly counterproductive. It suggests that the book’s subject is simply not interesting enough by himself.In the event, Morley’s chapter on Gielgud’s 1953 conviction for cottaging is actually a meticulous and unsensational account of how sexual mores change over time, as well as being a passionate attack on the forces of reaction in the early 1950s ­ “a quite remarkably intolerant time”. Arguing that the anti-gay witch-hunt of the period was less a conspiracy than a fit of hypocrisy, Morley shows how the “wildly unworldly” Gielgud failed to clock the changing climate ­ and was thus a victim both of brutal laws and of his own indiscretion.The book’s other so-called revelation is that Gielgud’s long-term lover, Martin Hensler, was a domestic tyrant, cruel, rude and ill-tempered.

Despite that, the couple lived together for some 40 years, and Gielgud was “absolutely devoted to him”. Being gay is clearly no immunisation against the more trying aspects of monogamy.Still, as Sher implies, perhaps there’s no such thing as “being gay”. In his case, his youthful attraction to fellow soldiers during military service and furtive pick-ups were but a prelude to living with one woman and marrying another. When that didn’t work out, Sher settled for gay promiscuity, then an open relationship, before finally finding his true love. It’s a story that shows the fragility of labels such as “gay” or “bisexual”.Reading between the lines, it’s clear that Sher’s sexuality was more a matter of sloughing off the thick skin of his upbringing and slowly discovering a world of pleasure than of simply joining Gay Sweatshop and starring in Torch Song Trilogy. Strangely enough, the surprising thing in this frank autobiography is how little passion he has for sex.Instead, what makes Sher’s pulses race is jealousy and cocaine.

In one eye-catching passage, he reveals how he used to compare himself with Simon Callow, who enjoyed all the success that he so badly craved Sadly, you can see his point Both men are great actors, but Callow is a better writer. The sensitive account that Callow published in 1999 of his complex feelings for the legendary theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, Love Is Where It Falls, is much more emotionally rewarding than Sher’s book.Then there’s the coke. While it is scarcely news that actors occasionally use Bolivian marching-powder to boost their performances, Sher’s excessive reliance on charlie leads him to a clinic. In a way, his book is part of his therapy: he wants everyone to know that Sher fought the habit and that Sher won.

Yet he never convincingly tells us what made him into such an addict.Instead, he’s at his best when talking about South Africa ­ and cultural misunderstanding. At one point, he writes to Katie, the family’s black servant, asking her not to address him as “master”. He later hears that she’s upset by this, wondering what she could have done to offend him.At one family reunion, Sher berates his traditionally minded South African relatives, comparing the fate of Europe’s Jews under Hitler with the condition of blacks under apartheid, but when the black maid enters the room, the whites fall guiltily silent.If Sher can’t quite put his finger on what exactly makes him tick, Morley is scarcely more successful with John G. Like most other Gielgud biographies, this is as much a history of British theatre in the 20th century as the study of a single individual. It is also the authorised version, solicited by Gielgud about 12 years ago, and Morley uses a mountain of interviews, letters and telling anecdotes.His chatty style and the clarity of his writing bring a whole era to life, yet Gielgud stubbornly remains a distant figure We never get a really good peek inside his head And we never learn what this workaholic was running from The same applies to Sher.

His initial willingness to provide unflattering details about himself soon palls ­ and the man’s true motivations are as obscure as if he had never done that therapy.Both these books are readable but also ultimately frustrating. Both show just how hard it is truly to know oneself, or to reach the essential wellsprings of another human being.Aleks Sierz’s book ‘In-Yer-Face Theatre: British drama today’ ( www.inyerface-theatre ) is published by Faber & Faber. In his 1970s primer for aspiring guerrilla movements, The War of the Flea, Robert Taber highlighted one “irony of political warfare.. that the rules are not the same for both sides”. The examples are legion, and have rebounded upon the Americans in Vietnam, the Israelis in Lebanon, and the Russians in Chechnya. More recently, the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling on the SAS killings of eight IRA men in 1987 has exercised this dichotomy.Although examples of colonial misrule tend to rebound among the subject population and international opinion, what the Spanish government did under the Socialist Party in the 1980s brought guerrilla war home to the centre of power.