Charlie Chaplin breaks his silence as budding novelist

Charlie Chaplin’s only known novel, a redemptive romance between a young ballerina and an ageing clown, has been published for the first time, The Times reported.

The 34,000-word Footlights, begun by Chaplin in 1948, eventually became the basis for his 1952 film, Limelight.

The text has been retrieved from a Chaplin archive held at the Cineteca di Bologna in Italy and published in its original English with the consent of the family, and a foreword by the Chaplin biographer David Robinsion.