Reviewed by Tony Cummings

"He doesn't keep cuttings... He's just not interested in talking about the past." So says Bill Latham about the music biz phenomenon that is Cliff Richard. But there are hundreds of thousands of fans for whom Cliff's past is a place of nostalgic pilgrimage as if picking through those halcyon rock 'n' roll years with the Shadows or those cornball years as a celluloid Batchelor Boy or even that balmy summer evening he sang "We Don't Talk Anymore" to 30,000 ecstatic Greenbelters will recapture a little of the glow of youth. This book is promoted as Cliff's first real biography but in fact most fans will have read a lot of the info before particularly if they read the Doncaster/Jasper biog of years back. Such is the sheer longevity of Cliff's career that Steve Turner has no option than to do a surface skim of people places and things though his - extensive interviews with people working, living or worshipping with Cliff down the years ensures there are plenty of reminiscences and anecdotes to stop the chronicle becoming too much of an annotated discography. Does Steve, one of Christendom's finest poets, lift the pop-star biography to some new level of creative writing? Does this book finally enable the reader to feel that they have a real insight to the inner workings of a man, who despite ten thousand public interviews remains profoundly private? Does 'Cliff Richard: The Biography' uncover the tensions of being a millionaire pop idol serving a Christ who lived a life of poverty and denounced idolatry? Of course not. But at least the book avoids the worst excesses of hagiography often associated with 'official' biographies or the hatchet jobs of salacious exposees. And you do get the facts, and a few insights, in a marathon showbiz career in a handsome, if expensive, volume. Thousands of Cliff nostalgists, and no few Christians, will be prepared to fork out £17 for this.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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