“There is nothing gray about Vanessa Redgrave nothing tepid or half hearted or uncaring. There is a greyness about some of the current English attitudes “we adore England” the traveller says, “but the British don’t seem to care”. Vanessa cares like no other person I know, she’s black and she’s white, with hard delineation. Confirmed in her loves and hates; they never overlap. Her crusades may become violent but the intent comes with infinite gentleness. She will judge in an uncanny instant of conscience the path to walk and never hear the gray crowd shouting “no”. She is adored worshipped, by a few and understood by a majority who do not even know what she is like. The majority embrace as England’s great actress, witty, beautiful, talented, showered with oscars; the glorious adventurous English woman with whom they identify- but Vanessa is not like this at all, glorious but average. What would she have been if the stage had not been there? One of Lesley Blanch adventuresses- Mary Worthley Montagu, Hester Stanhope, or even Mrs Fraser, who upsets Victorians by nakedly misleading that convict in Australia on a wilder shore. If you begin to understand this you being to know Vanessa. When she works everything is distracting. She’s extremely professional” - Norman Parkinson on Vanessa Redgrave
