Roger Lewis.
ROGER LEWIS: PETER SELLERS BIOGRAPHY
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS (1995)
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Peter Sellers (born 1925 as Richard Sellers) was a leading British comic actor of the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in Southsea, where both of his parents worked on the variety stage. His mother Peg was in the Ray Sisters troupe. Sellers made his stage debut at the age of two weeks when he was carried on stage by Dick Henderson at the Kings Theatre, Southsea. Sellers left school at fourteen and his first job, as a theatre caretaker, was at fifteen. At eighteen he joined the Royal Air Force, where he became a member of Ralph Reader’s Gang Show entertainment troupe. This took him to India, Ceylon, Burma, Germany and France. He continued his theatrical career after the war, his breakthrough role being on the BBC Radio comedy the Goon Show. He went on to a successful film career, culminating in the Pink Panther series. His notable films included ‘I’m Alright Jack’, Dr. Strangelove and How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In the latter he showcased his versatility by playing three roles with British, American and German accents.
The Sunday Times wrote of Roger Lewis’ biography of Peter Sellers: ‘It is a mad book - but then the subject is a madman. I love Lewis's passion ... I recommend it’. The Literary Review wrote: ‘Reinventing the genre as well as reassessing its subject with formidable intelligence, this book is a remarkable achievement.’
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Roger Lewis (born 1960) is an author and journalist who was educated at the University of St. Andrews and Magdalen College, Oxford. In addition to his Peter Sellers biography, he has written biographies of Laurence Olivier, Charles Hawtrey, and jointly of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. He has also contributed literary articles to the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.
