RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH and Diana Hawkins have been friends and colleagues for nearly 50 years. Now they are teaming up to write a frank, funny and revelatory account of their unlikely partnership and his extraordinary life.
ENTIRELY UP TO YOU, DARLING will open with an introduction to the odd couple who provide the text for this book. Their story begins with a famously weeping Attenborough accepting two Oscars in 1983 when his film, Gandhi, broke all previous British records with a total of eight Academy Awards.
At 82, Attenborough is the celebrity peer, happily married since 1945, reflecting on a lifetime of ceaseless activity as a film star, director, producer, company chairman and charitable campaigner.
Hawkins, 67, is Attenborough's publicist, confidante, co-producer and long term business partner.
Attenborough will reflect on the highs and lows of a long life, both in and out of the public gaze. Few know, for instance, that he once risked prison on a matter of conscience or that, as an air gunner cameraman, he took part in bombing raids over Germany during World War Two.
More poignantly, Attenborough will finally break his silence about his long running friendship with Princess Diana and the tsunami tragedy which robbed him of his elder daughter and granddaughter in December 2004.