Loitering with Intent: The Child

Peter O'Toole

30 January 2014
9781447271314
208 pages

Synopsis

Peter O'Toole's account of his early life - a childhood framed by "Captain" Patrick O'Toole, itinerant racetrack bookmaker and Constance Jane Eliot Ferguson who had "wavy black hair, quick eyes and a determination to marry for money", his schooldays under the long shadow of Adolf Hitler, his years in the navy, his short-lived career as a cub reporter and the almost accidental audition at RADA that launched his career.
Reading this book, I was given the impression that the author was writing while jumping on a trampoline, soaring, singing, flying, with horizontal and vertical landings, and occasionally standing still and quietly mewling. . . . A vastly entertaining, sometimes exasperating, highly literate comic work.