All My Yesterdays: An Autobiography

All My An Autobiography

Now retired and living on the island of Corfu, 95-year-old British author Lewis here offers a readable but occasionally garrulous and rambling overview of his adventurous life. An aviator in WW I, he flew dangerous missions, surviving the Battle of the Somme and an encounter with the famed "Red Baron," described more fully in his earlier memoir, Sagittarius Rising. After the war, he and others founded the British Broadcasting Corporation, which led to a professional relationship with George Bernard Shaw. Lewis's checkered career as a film director, novelist ( Challenge to the Night ) and Wing Commander during WW II provided him with the opportunity to live in many places, including Hollywood, Tahiti, Italy and Africa. A devotee of the late Greco-Armenian mystic Gurdjieff, Lewis devotes the latter portion of his memoir to a description of Gurdjieff's philosophy and its impact on his life.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A fighter pilot in World War I, film director, world traveler, author, pioneer in programming for the 1920s BBC, winner of an Oscar for a screenplay adaptation of his friend George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion , training instructor and commander of a wing of transport aircraft in Greece during World War II--all this would have been the sum of an exceptional life. But Lewis, at age 95, continues to pursue the enthusiasm of his later years, the convoluted writings of philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff. A fourth of Lewis's narrative is taken up with these discoveries and their outcomes, including having to sell his Italian retreat on the Lago Maggiore, which he had for years labored to perfect, to aid a small community of followers. This is a mostly engrossing autobiography for general readers.
- Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.