And God Created Burton is the first complete biography of the man who many people regard as the greatest Welshman ever to have lived. He is the actor who conquered Hollywood like no other British actor, before or since.
His story is a sweeping family saga that started in the coalmines of South Wales, graduated to the provincial theatres of Wales to the grand theatres of London and finally Broadway and culminating in international stardom on the film sets of Hollywood. It is the tale of a man who lived every day as if it was his last.
The biography starts in with the birth of his parents and ends with his own death in 1984 at the early age of 58. It examines every detail and every facet of Burton’s life. It details how one extraordinary man had three fathers, three mothers, seven brothers, six sisters and four wives, and how he loved them all. And how that same man earned US$75 million from the his 33-year career, the equivalent of US$1.5 billion in today’s money, making him the highest-paid British born actor in Hollywood history.
His achievements were considered all the greater as they were accomplished in the era of such great British actors as Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud as well as great American stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and Cary Grant.
Burton’s achievement was even more pronounced as his prowess uniquely spanned theatre, fi lm and television unlike any other actor before him. In the end, he became a genuine legend in his own lifetime and in the mid-sixties, for one year, he stood at the very pinnacle of Hollywood as the world’s most bankable actor. He also loved and lost some the most beautiful and talented actresses of the era, including Elizabeth Taylor, Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg. But he could have achieved even more if it had not been for his addiction to alcohol, a fate inherited from his father and which stayed with him right to the end of his days, eventually killing him and tarnishing an otherwise extraordinary career.
And God Created Burton is Tom Rubython’s first biography of an actor. He wanted to make sure that he wrote a complete biography that covered every facet of the actor’s life as well as all of his music. Rubython is a former magazine and newspaper editor spanning the worlds of sport and business. For over 30 years he worked in business magazines editing, amongst others, BusinessAge, EuroBusiness and Spectator Business. Then he moved to sport, editing F1 Magazine, BusinessF1 and SportsPro before becoming a full-time biography writer. He wrote his first book in 1995, and there have been more than 20 since. He is best known for his motor racing biographies including Life of Senna, which has sold more than 250,000 copies across the world, and Shunt, the story of James Hunt, which has sold more than 70,000 copies. More recently, he also wrote White Music, the story of the life of Barry White, and Boy Plunger, the biography of legendary share trader Jesse Livermore.
Rubython specialises in non-fiction storytelling and is passionate and methodical about the process of writing and researching the definitive biography. He starts with a determination to tell the full story of a person’s life, emphasising what is important and de-emphasising what is not, the two skills he believes are the crucial tools of any biographer.
