Charles Laughton directing "Night of the Hunter," 1955. Poorly received, the film, although brilliant, was Laughton's only directing effort.

Jorge Luis Borges outside the National Library in Buenos Aires, of which he was director from 1955 to 1973. He stepped down because of his increasing blindness and because of the return of Juan Peron, whom he despised.

Rachel Roberts and Albert Finney in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," one of the great British "kitchen-sink" dramas, 1960.

The Bernese Oberland near Lauterbrunnen.

J. M. Barrie, Scottish author not only of "Peter Pan" and "The Admirable Crichton," but also "Farewell, Miss Julie Logan," a haunting tale of the supernatural that has stayed with me ever since I first read it.

Another world, long gone, but one I visited once: East Berlin, 1971, with the then-new Fernsehturm (TV Tower) the sole bright spot in a sea of Communist drabness.

A scene from Stanley Kubrick's first masterpiece, "Paths of Glory," 1957.

Noël Coward at Waterloo Station in London, 1937.

Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot in Vadim's erotic drama "Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman," 1973.

Alain Delon, Mireille Darc, and Omar Sharif at the height of '70s fashion.

Rufus Sewell as Aurelio Zen in "Zen," based on the detective novels by Michael Dibdin. It was a pretty good TV series from the BBC, but it was unfortunately cancelled after the first season.

Hermann Hesse relaxing at the Schloss Bremgarten near Bern, Switzerland.

Cottage on Inishmore in the Aran Islands, Galway Bay, west of Ireland.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci arguing with Marlon Brando during the making of "Last Tango in Paris," 1972.

August Renoir, Pierre Bonnard and Misia Natanson, later famous as Misia Sert, photographed by Alfred Natanson at the funeral of poet Stéphane Mallarmé, 1898.

The Forth Rail Bridge over the Firth of Forth, near Edinburgh, Scotland.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn giving his famous commencement speech at Harvard, 1978.

The Pantheon in Rome on a warm summer evening.

Charles De Gaulle taking a thoughtful drag on his Gauloise.

Yours truly hanging around Trinity College, Dublin, in 1982.