Rudolf Nureyev’s Autobiography

Originally published by Hodder and Stoughton in the year following his defection to the West, An Autobiography with Pictures was written by Nureyev with Alexander Bland. The husband and wifeteam of Nigel Gosling and Maude Lloyd – who wrote as ‘Alexander Bland’ – were Nureyev’s closest friends in London. The book includes a substantial section of images of him at work and at rest by the great photographers of the day, Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon among them. 

The dust jacket of the first edition says that in the book, Nureyev ‘tells the story of his early years in a remote and poverty-stricken village. He has known hunger and great privation, but at a very early stage he became aware of a tremendous urge to dance, and his autobiography is a thrilling account of how this over-riding ambition was realised: how he made his way to Leningrad and, despite great opposition and prejudice, rose to be the outstanding dancer of his generation’. 

The book was published in Russian in 1998 and in French in 2016.