Dudley Moore - Tapa dura

Rena Fruchter was Dudley's concert piano partner, and the friend who looked after him in the final years of his life, until his death at the age of 66. This is her intimate portrait of the extraordinarily brilliant, complex character that was Dudley Moore. During the last ten years of his life Dudley changed. He stepped off the podium and into real life. Physically life was difficult, professionally it was turbulent, but during his final years he blossomed and in the midst of his illness from the debilitating effects of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, he found peace. Rena writes beautifully of Dudley's final years but also take us back through his life story - conveying his inimitable talent, humour and vibrancy, and evoking the atmosphere of a working class upbringing in Forties Britain, life in Fifties London and his relationship with Peter Cook and the excesses of Eighties LA. With style and precision she unravels his personality, looks back at his childhood and career, weaving a moving and compelling story of a unique man.

Rena Fruchter is a classical concert pianist and one time music journalist. She toured with Dudley Moore and also recorded several classical albums with him. In the last decade of his life she became his closest friend and confidante, and it was in Rena and her family's care that Dudley spent his last months.