Double Life

It's impossible not to think of Luigi Pirandello flicking through the pages of this book. Each one of us thinks they are one person, but it's not true. Each one of us is 'many different people', according to all the different possibilities of existence that lie within us. To put it more bluntly, the public and social life we live is different from our private life. The pages of this book are populated by a long list of famous people, to show how, in the age of the Internet, which has let privacy out of its cage through its social networks, and reality shows, which have now become a sociological concept, it is people's private life that really arouses the public's curiosity. It starts with Princess Grace (Kelly) of Monaco, whose second life, having abandoned Hollywood, was far more interesting than any of the films in which she starred. It goes on to document the wild social whirl of Brigitte Bardot, the dissolute life led by Kate Moss and the love affair between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: the point of it all is to show that real life impassions and enthuses people more than fiction, because it is the most interesting show ever invented. Now that media has exploded, a person's private life is what walks onto the stage, exposed to the spotlights and failures, the applause and whistles of an audience hungry for normality. 100 colour illustrations