The Lion That Lost Its Way: And Other Cautionary Tales of the Show Business Jungle

Between 1940 and 1967 Sydney Box made over 60 feature films and over 100 documentaries, including The Seventh Veil (1945), which earned him an Oscar (R) for Best Original Screenplay. In this candid and witty autobiography, Box provides fascinating and illuminating insights into the working of the British film industry. It covers the whole of Box's varied career in British cinema over the period 1940-65, as well as his earlier career as a writer and his later role as an impresario. This memoir also contains many perceptive portraits of those he worked with, including Dylan Thomas, Noel Coward, W. Somerset Maugham, the Duke of Windsor, J. Arthur Rank, Leslie Caron, Alec Guinness and George Bernard Shaw. Box's memoir is supplemented by 16 photos and an introduction and notes from film scholar Andrew Spicer, who clarifies any obscurities and assesses Box's significance to the British film industry.