For the truth is, Morris's complex character simply does not sit well with his latest biographer.

Such are the findings of her latest biographer, Barry Paris, and indeed of everyone who has written about Garbo the person.

These are all grotesque and wonderful creations, but perhaps the most important character is a real one, the late biographer of Henry James, Leon Edel.

And like those before him, her latest biographer concedes that he can only give us a fractional view: "This is her game, after all," he writes.

'The New Yorkers never forgave him,' says your latest biographer; and one scarcely marvels at the inveteracy of their malice.

But his latest biographers, A. Sperber and Eric Lax, say it isn't so.

Roald Dahl seems to stand out as the exception, the writer whose zeal his latest biographer is unable to find entrancing.

"I am old and you are young," he said, according to his latest biographer.

Her latest biographer, Lee Server, is no slouch when it comes to admiring Gardner.

In the end, then, the man known as Old Yeller Hair eludes both his latest biographers.