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Books

A profile of the worlds’s most famous film director — with the most famous profile

The Master of Suspense was full of fear and paranoia himself, reveals Christopher Bray in a review of two lives of Alfred Hitchcock

18 April 2015

9:00 AM

18 April 2015

9:00 AM

Alfred Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much Michael Wood

New Harvest, pp.129, £14

Alfred Hitchcock Peter Ackroyd

Chatto, pp.279, £12.99

‘Do it with scissors’ was Alfred Hitchcock’s advice for prospective murderers, though a glance at these two biographies reminds us that scissors are also the chosen implement of the silhouettist. Hitchcock’s profile —beaky nose, protuberant lips, conjoined chin and neck — is emblazoned on both dustjackets like a logo.

A logo is what it was.

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