Books by Simon Louvish

A tale of a Jewish family in Eastern Europe in 1905, a novel of history, ideas and delusionsFanning out from the small Moldavian village of Celovest at the turn of the 20th century, The Dream of Ages follows the global saga of the four sons and two daughters of a traditional Jewish family as their lives twist and turn in the storms of war, politics, art and ideology that rip apart the old Empires of the 19th century and create the schisms, aspirations, conflicts and realities of the modern world. Through WW I, the Russian Revolution and civil war, the dream of Zion, the magnet of America, the lure of the far east in China, the epic narratives of the scattered siblings turn from 1905 Odessa, the golden ages of Paris and Berlin, to the foundation years of Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, the mad frenetic world of vintage vaudeville, the Jewish settlements in Palestine, resistance and terror, the tale is drawn together by the reluctant quest of the next generation for answers to the moral, social, political and psychological puzzles that bedevil our own Age of Confusion, our worship of the "new" undermined by the unavoidable consequences of what passed before. Told in the intertwined voices of the protagonists, a novel of history, ideas, delusions, myths, magic, the trials and errors of life, and the forces that made us what we are.

An Everyman who expressed the defiant spirit of freedom, Charlie Chaplin was first lauded and later reviled in the America that made him Hollywood's richest man. He was a figure of multiple paradoxes, and many studies have sought to unveil 'the man behind the mask'. This title charts the tale of the Tramp himself through his films.

This is the first full and properly researched biography of all five Marx Brothers - Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy both passed away in the 1950s, yet their films still have the power to reduce audiences old and new to helpless laughter. Laurel inspired Hardy to forge their famous double act, in which Laurel played the eternal comic fool, Hardy his temperamental master.

A detailed account of W.C. Fields's artistic path to the cinema which aims to disentangle the facts from the myths nurtured by Fields himself. It follows his career from stage to silent screen, and his later struggle to create some of the most celebrated scenes in the history of cinema humour.