Diana Hawkins has worked with Richard Attenborough for nearly 50 years, first as his publicist, then as his business partner, and finally as his co-producer. Entirely Up to You, Darling is a rambling and unstructured collection of joint reminiscences, probably dictated rather than written. But they make for enjoyable reading, because Attenborough has had such a rich and varied life, Hawkins has a keen relish for character and anecdote, and they are obviously so fond of each other.

Although he's an ennobled champagne socialist of the old school, a mass of good causes and inconsistencies, he's far too benevolent and optimistic for his hypocrisies to infuriate. Within the space of two pages, as he jets around the world organising the film Gandhi (1982), Hawkins records “the first of our many business trips on Concorde ...The following lunchtime we again boarded Concorde...Flying Concorde to Washington the following morning...” Only four pages previously, Attenborough condemns “the dreadful George W Bush” for his environmental record.

Luvviedom and self-delusion combine deliciously in Attenborough's description of Ben Kingsley preparing for the role of Gandhi: “a near naked man with oiled body and shaven head” meditating on the lawn of a luxury hotel. Later Kingsley would “retreat to his suite for another lesson in spinning cotton on a wheel called the charkha”.

Funny, too - this time deliberately - are recollections of the Hollywood executive who scoffed, “Who the f*** wants to see a movie about a little brown guy dressed in a sheet carrying a beanpole?”, and another studio suggesting Richard Burton for the role, because at least he'd make Gandhi “sexy”. The most chilling anecdote stars that appalling, autocratic monster and cinematic genius, David Lean, and his account of how he left his wife (number three out of six). “I was looking in the mirror one morning, shaving, and could see her in reflection, blathering on about something utterly trivial. I suddenly thought, I don't like you. And I never spoke to her again.”

Gandhi was more controversial in India than you might remember. One Indian politician, who drank his own urine daily (something to do with the ancient and mysterious Wisdom of the East), threatened to starve himself to death if the film went ahead. Perhaps he wasn't enjoying his diet much anyway. And a female journalist objected to Gandhi being portrayed at all, but if he must be, said he should appear on screen “as a moving light”. In a rare loss of temper, Attenborough snapped back, “Madam, I am not making a film about bloody Tinkerbell!”

There is no getting round the overtly campaigning and cause-driven nature of much of Attenborough's “art”, though. He and his wife, he tells us, are “united in our hatred of racism”, leaving you wondering if there exist any arty couples united in their love of racism. This sort of mischievous reaction to the oppressive goody-goodiness may not be grown-up or constructive, but it feels as necessary as taking gulps of oxygen at high altitude. Faced with Attenborough's rather predictable culture heroes, you want to point out that Gandhi said some fantastically stupid things about the Jews in Nazi Germany, that “Dr” Martin Luther King plagiarised large chunks of his doctoral thesis, and that Nelson Mandela has a terrible taste in shirts. While reading I kept remembering the Ricky Gervais joke about prison not working since ex-cons only reoffend. “Well, it worked for Nelson Mandela, didn't it?”

Films such as Gandhi (1982) and Cry Freedom (1987) made Attenborough a kind of international figurehead of caring cinema, and soon everyone wanted to meet him. Others may have requested audiences with Mother Teresa, but Mother Teresa requested an audience with him. “A birdlike figure with wizened face”, more intriguingly she was also “the most outrageous flirt”. Her memorable farewell was, “See you at the feet of Jesus.” He also coached a nervous young Princess Diana in public speaking, and soon they became close friends and confidantes, addressing each other as Darling and Dickie. She wrote him letters “sprinkled with little sad or smiley faces”, criticised his Garrick Club tie (“those ghastly cucumber-green and salmon-pink stripes”) and sent him a Hermes replacement.

His view of the People's Princess - he quotes Tony Blair's toe-curling sobriquet admiringly - like his view of his other heroes, is entirely uncritical, and to some readers will surely seem cloying. Diana was “the first royal ever to take the hand of an Aids sufferer or to cradle the face of a leper”. The first royal savvy enough to do it in front of a camera, anyway. Attenborough says that he “hates organised religion”, but really he belongs to the touchy-feely new Church in which Diana, Gandhi, King and Mandela are the martyrs and saints. Only time can tell whether the films of such an orthodox and conformist thinker will endure. All the same, he's clearly a kindly man, this lifelong socialist with a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and “a young woman to tend his orchids”. Two cheers for the old Bollinger Bolshie, I reckon.

Entirely Up To You, Darling by Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins
Hutchinson £20 Offer Price for Times Readers £18.00 - Buy the Book

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