Charlie Chaplin: Lifting the sheets on comic king

SUCH a slim book (264 pages, including bibliography and index) for such a great figure in popular entertainment? And while we’re in an inquisitive mood, we’ll ask not only the most obvious question but also, perhaps, the most justified: with up to 200 biographies (including David Robinson’s 1985 tome, Chaplin, his Life and Art, which many regard to be the definitive account), several autobiographies and various personal accounts from some of his children and former wives, why on earth would anyone want to read yet another biography of Charlie Chaplin?

Of course, what makes the real difference between one biography and the next (or, in the case of Chaplin, almost 200 more) is not so much the shuffling around of facts and chronology, but the writer. Fully aware that there is nothing new in the line of biographical facts to unearth, renowned British novelist/biographer Peter Ackroyd decides to do the next best thing: to look anew at Chaplin’s background and career, and to place his own meticulously arranged viewpoints on and around it.