‘The general and rapid narratives of history, which involve a thousand fortunes in the business of a day … afford few lessons applicable to private life,’ wrote Dr Johnson. This biography is not intended as an exhaustive account of Ian McKellen’s career. The ‘business’ of Sir Ian McKellen’s life in the wide sense meant here are his film and theatre roles, numbering over several hundred. Some of these have more detailed coverage than mine in Joy Leslie Gibson’s 1985 biography, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Mark Barratt’s 2005 unauthorised biography, published by Virgin, and David Weston’s Covering McKellen, published by Oberon. I would refer the reader to these, and to Sir Ian McKellen’s own record of his life and acting, his website at www.mckellen.com, for further reading.
I acknowledge with warmest thanks the generous help given to me by Times Newspapers and Associated Newspapers, namely John Witherow, editor of The Times, and Ted Verity, editor of the Mail on Sunday, who authorised my exploration of their truly impressive archive materials on McKellen. The size of these, especially those of the Mail and Mail on Sunday in Derry Street, possibly exceeds that of any contemporary stage performer and I was not in any way expecting to find as much as I did. The Associated Newspaper library has not only hundreds of carefully folded paper cuts from all major publications in their hallowed buff envelopes before they moved on to database memory in 2005, but over eight thousand entries for McKellen just from major press publications since that time. I must specially thank Su Blanch of the Mail on Sunday‘s features desk, and Jonathan Bain and others of the library; also my gratitude goes out to Steve Baker, Ian Brunskill and Marc Cutler of the Times archive situated in Bromley-by-Bow; Victoria Ewart for undertaking research, and my special debt is owed to Samantha Hill for valorously puzzling over my handwriting, and typing successive drafts. Alan Samson, the publisher, has given me massive support, as has Peter Cox, my manager and agent, and editor, Celia Hayley. I thank also Natalie Dawkins, for her help with the illustrations, and the meticulous copy-editing of John English.
To acknowledge each and every person who has contributed by talking to me about Ian McKellen over the years would run to pages. Of the scores of those who have helped me in amassing my items, quotes and accounts, many are no longer with us, and some have no wish to be named. All have my unbounded thanks and love, as indeed have my wife and family for their support. I must add that all the opinions, theories, comments and suppositions are entirely my own, and if I have made any mistakes of fact, or in quotation, every effort will be made to rectify these in future editions.