Intoxicating: swaggering, cringing, furious, vulnerable, chaotic, bilious, funny, mad. A seamless, authentic, exhilarating read, without a single slack paragraph.

Highly entertaining

At once poignant and hilarious

A welcome contrast to the current trend of macho post-rehab confessions by tedious hard-rock narcissists

A seamless, authentic, exhilarating read, without a single slack paragraph. I inhaled it like WD40 round the back of Lidl

It'll make you lol but is also full of poignancy in classic Smithy Style

Strong accounts of his highs and lows... [the book] lays bare the distorting lens of modern celebrity.

A vivid, sympathetic account... provides a definitive explanation of Welles's ultimate, lingering downfall

I am already looking forward to [the third volume] such is Callow's sympathetic absorption in the mass of material, which he handles with a light and ironic touch, that I found myself utterly hooked... As an actor himself Callow writes illuminatingly about Welles's performances

Callow's enterprise is one of the rarest in publishing. It leaves the reader dry-mouthed with anticipation for his final, third volume

The only biog really worth it's salt this year...reliably entertaining, wise and sane

Welles’s packed schedule is rifled through with chatty elegance