Seducing Ingrid Bergman

Dec 12, 2025 1:23 AM

Author:Chris Greenhalgh

Chris Greenhalgh, screenwriter of the 2009 film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, captures the love affair between two unforgettable people: Casablanca actress Ingrid Bergman and legendary photographer Robert Capa, in this heart-wrenching novel Seducing Ingrid Bergman.

June, 1945.

In newly liberated Paris, battle-ravaged photographer Robert Capa is drowning his sorrows. After ten years of recording horror and violence, he longs for for a diversion.

Ingrid Bergman has been sent to entertain the troops and when she walks into the Ritz Hotel, Capa is enchanted. From the moment he slips a mischievous invitation to dinner under her door, the two find themselves helplessly attracted. Ingrid, tired of her passionless marriage, and her controlling film studio, is desperate for freedom and excitement.

And Capa is willing to oblige. Dinners in cafés he can't afford. Night walks along the Seine. Dancing barefoot in nightclubs. Trysts in hotel rooms. He brings her back to life and she fills the hole inside him.

With everything at stake, both Capa and Ingrid are presented with terrible choices.

Full of the romantic glamour of 40s Paris and Hollywood, Seducing Ingrid Bergman tells the heart-wrenching story of the secret affair between the iconic Casablanca star and the famous photographer.

'Delightful and engrossing . . . a marvellous piece of writing . . . I read it with huge enjoyment' Barbara Erskine, author of Whispers in the Sand

'Greenhalgh's characters are sharply drawn, in particular the contrast between Bergman's inner turmoil and the slick celebrity seen by the public. Capas's self-image is equally conflicted, but together the two conjure a delicious tale of illicit freedom and, ultimately, thwarted love' Financial Times

'From a jubilant, irresistibly romantic Paris just after World War II, to Hollywood during its golden age, Chris Greenhaugh's Seducing Ingrid Bergman rapturously depicts the doomed love affair of two icons of the twentieth century. Like its protagonists Ingrid Bergman and Robert Capa, this is a book with both a sentimental heart and a soul of grit. I loved it.' Melanie Benjamin, New York Times Bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife.

Chris Greenhalgh is the prize-winning author of three volumes of poetry, a novel, and wrote the screenplay for Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, which occupied the prestigious closing slot at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. He lives with his wife and two sons in Sevenoaks.

www.chris-greenhalgh.com

Reviews

Brilliant and glamorous

—— Alex Jones, The One Show

Delightful and engrossing. [Greenhalgh] slips with utter authenticity under the skin of a female character. Marvellous piece of writing

—— Barbara Erskine, author of , Whispers in the Sand

Greenhalgh artfully shuffles the few known facts to create a rich, lyrical novel that manages their affair without a trace of sentimentality

—— GQ

From a jubilant, irresistibly romantic Paris just after World War II, to Hollywood during its golden age, Chris Greenhaugh's Seducing Ingrid Bergman rapturously depicts the doomed love affair of two icons of the twentieth century. Like its protagonists Ingrid Bergman and Robert Capa, this is a book with both a sentimental heart and a soul of grit. I loved it.

—— Melanie Benjamin , New York Times Bestselling author of 'The Aviator's Wife'.

Greenhalgh's characters are sharply drawn, in particular the contrast between Bergman's inner turmoil and the slick celebrity seen by the public. Capas's self-image is equally conflicted, but together the two conjure a delicious tale of illicit freedom and, ultimately, thwarted love

—— Financial Times

Toibin has created an impressive work of religious imagination...haunting, highly original.

—— TLS

Beautifully crafted

—— The Times

Fearsomely strange, deeply thoughtful

—— Guardian

With deceptively modest prose, Tóibín presents the Virgin Mary's story as one of human loss rather than salvation. By doing so he gives us a Mary to identify with rather than venerate.

—— Metro

Daring and very moving

—— John Banville , "Books of the Year", Irish Times

The Testament of Mary, a novella of absences and silences, achieves a shimmering power

—— Joseph O'Connor , Irish Times, "Books of the Year"

Tóibín's take on the most famous mother in history ... is all too believable

—— Financial Times, "Books of the Year"

[Reveals] Vonnegut’s passions, annoyances, loves, losses, mind and heart . . . The letters stand alone—and stand tall, indeed. . . . Vonnegut’s most human of hearts beats on every page

—— Kirkus Reviews

A well-rounded collection of letters

—— James Campbell , Guardian

[The letters] have a directness and a consistency, a scruffy but ensnaring humanity… Kurt seems by turns kind, engaged, imaginative, witty, self-deprecating (“I write with a big black crayon… grasped in a grubby, kindergarten fist,”) and – on various fronts – courageous

—— Keith Miller , Daily Telegraph

Crisply edited... There was something fundamentally goodhearted about Vonnegut. For all his gloom and cantankerousness, he never entirely lost his faith in human nature.

—— John Preston , Spectator

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