Issue 29 - Nov. 09
David Nixon - Entertainer With The Magic Touch
Edwin A. Dawes and Steve Short
Available from: www.magicbooksbypost.co.uk
Price: £35.00
Also available in a collector’s edition. 288 pages, hand-bound in half leather with a hand crafted slip case. Signed by both the authors and the Nixon family. Limited to 100 numbered copies.
Price:
£150
David Nixon was born in 1919 and by the time of his death
at the age of just 59 in 1978, he had become one of Britain's best known and
most loved entertainers. This fabulous 276 page hard backed book tells the story
of this real gentleman of stage and screen, and co-authors Edwin A. Dawes and
Steve Short are to be heartily congratulated and thanked for producing such a
hugely detailed and fitting tribute to the life of a born entertainer.
Strangely, given David Nixon's celebrity, there has been up to now no major work
published on his life, and so it is quite marvellous that this excellent book
has been produced to fill that void.
When I was growing up as a boy in the 1960s, David Nixon
meant 'magic' to me. Starved as I was of contact with other magicians, David's
appearances on television with his magic show were an exciting highlight and a
not-to-be-missed occasion. What I didn't realise at the time, of course, was
that David had been an established magician and TV celebrity for many years
prior to those days when I came across him, and this book carefully and
painstakingly logs all the ups and downs of David's career from his time in ENSA
during the war entertaining in Africa and Europe, through his early days as a TV
magician, to his 'big break' as a long running panel member on the hugely
popular 'What's My Line', through to his time as the country's best known TV
magician.
The account of David's life is both a factual one in terms
of his career - the amount of research and detail provided is quite staggering -
and also a very personal one. This book enables you to gradually get to know
David Nixon the man as well as David Nixon the consummate entertainer, and it
makes for fascinating and absorbing reading. In the introduction, Edwin Dawes
comments that usually with books of this nature, salacious revelations about the
person are often made in order to spice up the reading, but that in David
Nixon's case he states "our dilemma is that we have been unable to uncover
anything remotely requiring discretion!" And in many ways this sums up
David's character - he was genuinely a polite and gentlemanly person whose
character warmed him to the hearts of everyone who knew him and who watched him
work.
I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who has an
interest in the development of magic in the period from the 1940s to the 1970s
because not only does it detail what David Nixon was doing, but in passing it
manages to set the scene on what was happening in entertainment generally at the
same time so that David's part in the main picture is put into context. He was
undoubtedly the first truly big magic star created by TV and this book helps you
to understand just how big his name was during this period.
The book has been written with love and with attention to
detail, and the authors have been able to draw on the huge assistance of David's
surviving family for a large amount of factual detail and also photographs. As a
result, this book is a veritable feast of facts and pictures, and the photos in
particular I found to provide a fascinating series of snapshots of an era.
This book has been produced in glossy 'coffee table' book
style and is a quality production from start to finish. Unreservedly recommended
to anyone who would enjoy reading about the life of a great entertainer. ML
What's Hot: the amount of facts provided and the
entertaining and informative writing style
What's Not: it's a heavy lump of a book to rest on your lap!
Star Rating: *****
To find a specific review, just click on the relevant letter for the product name
0-9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
RETURN to the magicseen homepage