Venice before the spotlight

One of the most inviting ways into a memoir is through an ordinary family object. Bars & Stars begins with Wilton Morley’s mother and her movie camera: short, silent glimpses of people and places, brought back to life when she puts up a screen at home.

Her mother was the actress Gladys Cooper. Her husband was Robert Morley. Yet the opening chapter is interested in the habits and personalities inside the family. Public recognition sits beside the quieter business of knowing someone well: how they travel, what amuses them, what they choose to keep to themselves.

A summer remembered in details

In ‘The Grand Canal’, childhood holidays in Venice bring the family to the Hotel Des Bains on the Lido. There are beach cabanas, film-festival visitors and a gondola journey to dinner in a palazzo. The memory rests on particulars: cool marble, a breeze from the water, the pleasure of being somewhere that leaves a lasting impression.

Robert Morley’s restlessness supplies another thread. An outing might begin with a suggestion from the bath and become a search for a restaurant, a visit to a castle or a trip to the races. Through his son’s recollections, the actor emerges as a companion with an appetite for the next adventure.

The pleasure of a life told at close range

For readers drawn to theatre and film, the familiar names are an invitation. The personal details are what make the invitation worth accepting. They give the reader a view of the family beyond a cast list or a publicity photograph.

That combination continues through an illustrated memoir spanning England, Australia and Florida, with bars, theatre and encounters supplying different stages for the same interest in people. The photographs add another way of looking at the remembered world.

If you know Wilton through his hospitality, Bars & Stars offers a way to spend more time with the stories behind the host. Start with the opening below, then follow the journey from those early family scenes into the wider memoir.