THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND: A Chronicle of an Unusual Friendship

Brian Desmond Hurst (1900–1986) hadn't made a movie in nearly a decade when Robbins met him in the early '70s, but the director was able to persuade the struggling young journalist to write an epic screenplay about the birth of Christ. The film was destined to remain in perpetual development and confound Robbins's expectations at every turn (a brief encounter with Sir Michael Redgrave, for example, turned out not to be about casting the role of Herod, but about soliciting Robbins's help in discreetly paying off a male prostitute blackmailing the famous actor). By this point, it becomes readily apparent to readers that the real story here is about the unlikely bond Robbins developed with Hurst, an old-school queen who barreled through life with an engaging combination of flamboyance and guardedness. Anecdotes haphazardly follow one another, held together by the force of Hurst's personality (and Robbins's willingness to mock his own youthful sexual insecurity). For the most part, it's all one extended lark, although Hurst pulls back the curtain of self-invention in moving interludes to reveal the truth about his Irish childhood and the brutal suffering on the battlefields of Gallipoli. Though this title may primarily be of interest to gay readers, anyone who loved Withnail & I will be entertained by Robbins's comic misadventures. (May)