As an actor, Dirk Bogarde became a giant of the intellectual cinema, working with directors such as Joseph Losey, Lucino Visconti, and Alain Resnais. Fiercely protective of his privacy, and that of his partner of 40 years, he left England in the 1960s to live on the continent, where he carved a second career for himself as a bestselling autobiographer and successful novelist. Although Bogarde destroyed many of his papers, his family has made available his personal archive to John Coldstream, who knew him well in his last years.