Laurence Olivier, as he appears in Philip Ziegler’s new Life, is a man of such raging oppositions that it is hardly surprising that his biographer seems unable to decide whether to like him or loathe him. The reader may be similarly torn. There are countless examples of Olivier’s kindnesses to lesser members of a cast or theatre company, yet he was riven by envy of the successes enjoyed by contemporaries such as John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Michael Redgrave. On the one hand a distant (and in the case of his eldest son, almost absent) father, Olivier was also an attentive listener, interested in other people and their lives, regardless of their importance. The vitality and glow of his charm were legendary – and so were his vicious and uncontrolled rages. A picture