IAN KELLY

Author Interview

Alexander Larman meets the author of the definitive biography of Beau Brummell, to find out about his many other activities as an actor/writer/playwright

I’ve always been of the opinion that the two most interesting things in the world are sex and the 18th century.’ So says the writer, actor and playwright Ian Kelly, one of the true Renaissance men working today. Over the course of an eclectic career, he’s done everything from play Hermione Granger’s father in one of the Harry Potter films to writing the definitive modern biography of Chap hero Beau Brummell, and has managed to retain his sangfroid in all situations. We talked to the great Mr. Kelly about many things, including, but not limited to, the two most interesting things in the world.

CHAP: Your website calls you a ‘writer, actor, historical biographer, screenwriter and playwright’, which reminded me of the joke in Stoppard’s Invention of Love about Charon’s confusion when it came to AE Housman being both a classicist and a poet. Do you ever find similar confusion when it comes to any of your own artistic identities?

“Lockdown sartorial splendours include thermal long johns and even fingerless gloves when the heating isn’t working. It would be La Boheme in a Parisian garret, except it turns out January ain’t that romantic if the boiler’s buggered”

KELLY: Yes, that does sound a bit confused doesn’t it? But it is just how things have panned out. I always loved writing and acting, telling stories, especially from history, and have been fortunate to be able so to do. My life, for good or ill, remains rather as it always was, even as a student, jumping between dressing rooms and libraries, with now the

occasional archive or location thrown in as well. Though these days, if I am lucky, I get paid.

CHAP: Your erstwhile co-star Simon Russell Beale once called acting ‘three dimensional literary criticism’. Having played real-life characters such as Prince George (in your own play), Robert Lyon and Woodrow Wilson, what have been the challenges of interpreting such historical figures, whether in the theatre or in film?

KELLY: In terms most obviously of empathy, there is a great deal in common between being an actor and a biographer. Trying to inhabit and understand another life, hoping to communicate some of this to new audiences, via some prism of one’s own experiences, senses and ‘voice.’ Biography is an empathetic conversation between writer and subject, just as acting is to some extent a mediation between character, actor, playwright and audience.

Echoes of the past can help you as a writer, but I suppose I do think of the process of acting and ‘imagining’ history as very closely related exercises in three-dimensional empathy. You can see this in action at events like the Festival of History, an English Heritage festival of ‘re-enactors’ with invited historians speaking and selling books, and wearing appropriate attire. I need hardly tell the readers of The Chap that clothes can richly inform one’s feeling for the past. My line always was that I believed passionately in physical research. Until, that is, I wrote a biography of Casanova, when the idea could be misunderstood.

CHAP: Would you describe yourself as ‘an actor who writes’, ‘a writer who acts’ or something else entirely?

KELLY: I’d be loath to describe myself at all. I am a man who tries to be a loving dad, a mate to his friends, make the world a slightly more fun place if I can (though that amounts some weeks to nothing more than making a really cracking Sunday roast) and who is lucky enough to be paid – erratically – for things he is curious about.

CHAP: Your first biography, of Chap icon Beau Brummell, attracted the kind of acclaim that Brummell himself would have sold his grandmother for. What drew you to the Beau as a subject?

KELLY: Is that an allusion to Grandma Brummell’s early life as a West End brothel madam? The critical response was as happy as it was unexpected, in that at the time I had wanted, (pomposity alert) to try to ‘prove’ Brummell was worthy of serious and lengthy consideration: the clothes, the cultural moment, the myth and also his post-mortem denigration. Brummell lives on for me in a number of ways. Latterly, this may be the Bridgerton effect. He became a drawing-together of the differing things I do: biography, theatre, film – but all of them actually representing very different ‘Beaux’ and none of them completely ‘him’.

He is an enigma as a personality; it was rather the ideas around him that drew me to him: the clothes, tailoring, sex, British ‘masculinity’, ideas of fashionability and the Neo-Classical and so on. I was lucky, as with an earlier book about the birth of gastronomy, to hit a moment when people were keen to allow those discussions – and more to the point men were willing – to read about matters sartorial, sensual, and to buy those sorts of books. No-one had written much about Brummell in a generation, and I stumbled on some new material, but it was also partly about an actor’s love of dressing up and the stories clothes tell. So I owe Brummell a lot... including some marvellous Anderson & Sheppard and Meyer & Mortimer suits…

CHAP: And the follow-up to that was the similarly lauded Casanova. Did you think that you would become the chronicler of well-dressed libertines at this stage in your career, or was it mere coincidence?

KELLY: ‘Well-dressed-libertines’; sounds like a band. One thing leads to another. I hadn’t intended to write so much about sex in Brummel. He had been thought a sort of asexual martyr-saint of fashion, which turned out to be very much not the case. So Casanova, as one central figure in what is sometimes described as ‘the First Sexual Revolution’ (the 18th century) and certainly one of its most intriguing writers, seemed a natural sequel.

And to be frank, I also knew it would be a joy to research. Essentially, Giacomo Casanova writes in his memoirs about travel, sex, love, food and people, and has scattered his archive around Europe’s most beautiful cities: Paris, Prague, Venice, St Petersburg. On the whole, I’ve always been of the opinion first voiced by the wonderful Irish feminist Brigid Brophy, that the two most interesting things in the world are sex and the 18th century. So what’s not to like?

CHAP: Did you have any especially exciting or amusing moments of discovery in your research for both books?

KELLY: The exciting find with Brummell, unexpectedly, were his medical records (the book is still available, so I’ll leave that for readers to discover). The thrilling aspect of the Casanova

journey was its recent adaptation into a full-length ballet. This is not the sort of thing as happens to historical-non-fiction works at all often, and that ballet remains one of my happiest experiences of collaboration and adaptation. Writing without words turned out to suit me… not sure what to make of that.

“Biography is sometimes giving people a good hearing, and I am drawn to the neglected, or derided, to see what we might have missed. We are all flawed, we all deserve an empathetic ‘reading’, and there is compassion and even self-compassion in recognising this in others, and in oneself”

CHAP: Preceding them both was Cooking for Kings, which you also performed as a one-man show. What were the challenges that you faced of turning a book into drama?

KELLY: The book and play are being adapted as a tv drama series with Banijay in Paris (Versailles, Peaky Blinders) but it’s becoming a piece about Talleyrand and espionage as well as about food and sex (you’ll note a theme here). As a solo show, it made the front cover of the NYTimes Food Section, and was somewhat fêted (possibly because we fed the audience French patisserie after each show) but I’ve blanked a lot of the memory out of sheer terror. It was good preparation for what has followed in some regards, as there really was nowhere to hide. If the choux didn’t rise to the occasion, as it were, everyone knew.

CHAP: This, of course, stood you in good stead for Mr Foote’s Other Leg, which was both an award-winning book and a West End show. Foote was considerably less well known than either Beau Brummell or Casanova, but did you feel, as an actor, that his story spoke to you more than the other two?

KELLY: Yes and no. What Foote afforded me, as both biographical subject and protagonist of my first full length play, was a chance to explore the metaphor of theatre in looking at the age of revolutions – and at the focus upon fallible celebrities as a way of understanding and embodying those revolutionary concepts. So it’s a very modern tale, and also full of my experiences of a life in the theatre, its joys and heartbreak. But Foote as a character is very far from myself. Simon Russell Beale’s recreation of someone teetering on the edge of sanity as a result partly of circumstance and his sexuality, but also as a result of a wild, dangerous and brave political-satirical talent – I admire and am fascinated by it, but very much from the wings.

CHAP: The play was liberally stuffed with really excellent jokes. Do you have the feeling of ‘Nailed it!’ when you come up with a good one-liner, or were a lot of them refined and perfected through the rehearsal and editing process?

KELLY: There’s a lot of Foote himself in there, as well as me, and it was a cast of world-class comedians. Life can be pretty shit, especially of late, and there’s a lot to be said for laughter. The play was in part about theatre ghosts, but also the way jokes get recycled or are left uncredited. I chose in the end to accept Richard Eyre’s invitation to be in it, which had not been the original idea, and play Prince (later King) George. It was really an excuse to enjoy the ride and listen to the sound of laughter from the wings every night. The theatre is a living beast, changing nightly with the audience and it fascinates me to see how meaning is constructed in a discussion between actors and audience. In comedy, this is very apparent, when something is, or is not, working. It’s why comedians are the braver performers, while never having the kudos of ‘straight’ actors. I find comedy very moving as an art form because of that – the laughter fades, the art is lost, but the live ‘nailed it!’ moment is the essence of a truth revealed.

CHAP: Foote, the Beau and Casanova are deeply flawed but somehow very sympathetic figures in your telling. Was this something that you look for in people whose lives you explore – whether the flaws or the sympathy?

KELLY: I learn for good or ill that I am attracted to damaged people, in life and as subjects, in a sense out of empathy but also in wanting to understand, and even bring healing, both in life and in my subjects. I don’t mean to be an apologist, and I try to present biographical subjects warts-and-all, but I cannot help but empathize – exactly as you would as an actor. Biography is sometimes giving people a good hearing, and I am drawn to the neglected, or derided, to see what we might have missed. We are all flawed, we all deserve an empathetic ‘reading’, and there is compassion and even self-compassion in recognising this in others, and in oneself.

CHAP: You collaborated with Vivienne Westwood on her autobiography. What were the highlights of that experience, and how did it feel to write about a living, rather than long-dead, subject?

KELLY: It came my way unexpectedly as a commission and invitation. Vivienne and I used to joke that we met in the 18th century, in that she has a long fascination with the era and its art and philosophies, and had read my Brummell book. And so it came to pass. Highlights included some insights into the graft and glamour of the fashion world, and into Dame Vivienne’s singular mind and world view. But on the whole, I find I am happier in the archive. A living subject rightly gets to say, and Vivienne often did, ‘Oh I see it looked that way, but that wasn’t how it felt to me’ which turned it into a unique and valuable collaboration – the inner and outer view.

CHAP: Is there anyone else who you would like to write about?

KELLY: I’ve been working on another theatrical subject, a piece with the working title Principall Player: A Life of William Shakespeare, the Actor, but I have been busy with adaptive work and dramas for stage and screen. I am constantly fascinated by lives and think ‘Ah yes, there’s another book’ so we shall see. I’ve just started on a play about Shostakovich and Stalin, and have various real-lives I am dealing with dramatically for television: Talleyrand, Dr Johnson, Alexandre Dumas, and now all the Rothschilds for the series I am co-writing with Julian Fellowes. My dreams are quite confused and

CHAP: Which other biographers and (living) playwrights do you admire?

KELLY: The list is so long. Antonia Fraser first really inspired me about biography. Now, there would be Claire Tomalin, Jenny Uglow, Philip Hoare, Simon Winchester, Alistair Horne, Jeremy Black, Richard Holmes, Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne, some young Turk called Alex Larman (shurely some mistake – Ed). Mark Kurlansky was a major influence, and so on. As living playwrights go, I am a fully signed up Stoppard fan, also contemporaries and pals like Lee Hall and Jez Butterworth. Nina Raine’s work I adore, along with Lucy Prebble, Joe Penhall, James Graham and Laura Wade. Some of the most interesting work of course is on the fringe and from the next generation, and I love physical theatre too, which sometimes originates with more of a collective than a playwright, so I’ll namecheck Frantic Assembly and Scott Graham and the work of Henry Naylor.

CHAP: Like many screenwriters, you have been attached to many projects that have been optioned, developed and even written, but are yet to be filmed. Which ones would you most like to see filmed?

KELLY: I long for the simplicity of books sometimes, where they definitively end up on a shelf, but two or three of the screen projects really are quite close now. I’d adore to see filmed a commission that came my way after Mr Foote, about Handel and the chaotic premier of Messiah in Dublin in 1741… but that’s gone a Hollywood route that is unfathomable to me.

CHAP: You currently live in Paris, how do you find that?

KELLY: Paris was forced upon me by circumstance, come the pandemic and other dramas, but even in lockdown, it is my favourite city in the world.

CHAP: As this is a Chap interview, we must touch on matters sartorial. Is there an ‘Ian Kelly writing ensemble’ that should be in the boutiques and gentlemen’s outfitters, and if so what does it comprise?

KELLY: Lockdown sartorial splendours include thermal long-johns and even fingerless gloves when the heating isn’t working. It would be La Boheme in a Parisian garret, except it turns out January ain’t that romantic if the boiler’s buggered.

CHAP: What item of clothing are you most proud of or besotted with?

KELLY: No single item. Any old actor will tell you ‘You shouldn’t hold on to costumes’. I’m fairly happy naked.

CHAP: And have you ever committed any fashion faux pas that you would like to share with our readers?

KELLY: I was a teenager in the 80s, so; obviously… plus, I was a ginger kid whose mother dressed him in purple. I’ve think over-shared already…

CHAP: What would be your epitaph?

KELLY: There’s something in Foote about leaving behind the sound of laughter, but actually I’d as happily be remembered for being kind – and meaning it. n