Tom Hiddleston- Letters Live, All this I did Without You 

Laci Cole agreed 🙌🙌😂

I want him to read the Fitnessgram pacer test

I GENUINELY CACKLED AT THIS

lmao

Totally agreed

Theblackdragon136 Same!! 😍😍😘

Me too... 😘😍😍 I would marry him in a heartbeat... ❤💜

Lol yeah 💖👍🥰

me too I love him so much 😂💞

Damn yes

this is more than a letter, this is a damn masterpiece!

Ayame Williams Do these readings always happen?

Ayame Williams Where did it happen? I'm not british...

Right? I miss it.

i still write letters many of which are like this one that i never sent out. i'm 16 and unlike most teenagers i love poetry. out of all of it i find it more better to send letters than text, a letter has a lot more meaning to me than a text. do you think so as well ?

Virlita D A me too

Me yoo

U r not alone 😁

Oh god YESS!!!😍😍

Its a British thing alot of us say darling in a similar fashion

+Stephanie Reyes same for me!

+Stephanie Reyes same here

+Stephanie Reyes And the way he says "I love you..."

Chris Evans uggggggggggg same I just freaking love this man

Do a try not to Laugh Challenge

But - having said all that - let us consider things in detail. Don’t let this become public but … well, I have one or two faults. Minor ones, I hasten to say. For example, I am inclined to be overbearing. I do it for the best possible motives (all tyrants say that) but I do tend (without thinking) to tread people underfoot. You must tell me when I am doing it to you, my sweet, because it can be a very bad thing in a marriage. Right. Second blemish. This, actually, is not so much a blemish of character as a blemish of circumstance. Darling I want you to be you in your own right and I will do everything I can to help you in this. But you must take into consideration that I am also me in my own right and that I have a headstart on you … What I am trying to say is that you must not feel offended if you are sometimes treated simply as my wife. Always remember that what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. But I am an established ‘creature’ in the world, and so - on occasions - you will have to live in my shadow. Nothing gives me less pleasure than this but it is a fact of life that has to be faced. Third (and very important and nasty) blemish: jealousy. I don’t think you know what jealousy is (thank God) in the real sense of the word. I know that you have felt jealousy over Lincoln’s wife and child, but this is what I call normal jealousy, and this - to my regret - is not what I’ve got. What I have got is a black monster that can pervert my good sense, my good humour and any goodness that I have in my make-up. It is really a Jekyll and Hyde situation … my Hyde is stronger than my good sense and defeats me, hard though I try. As I told you, I have always known that this lurks within me, but I could control it, and my monster slumbered and nothing happened to awake it. Then I met you and I felt my monster stir and become half awake when you told me of Lincoln and others you have known, and with your letter my monster came out of its lair, black, irrational, bigoted, stupid, evil, malevolent. You will never know how terribly corrosive jealousy is; it is a physical pain as though you had swallowed acid or red hot coals. It is the most terrible of feelings. But you can’t help it - at least I can’t, and God knows I’ve tried. I don’t want any ex-boyfriends sitting in church when I marry you. On our wedding day I want nothing but happiness, both for you and me, and I know I won’t be happy if there is a church full of your ex-conquests. When I marry you I will have no past, only a future: I don’t want to drag my past into our future and I don’t want you to do it, either. Remember I am jealous of you because I love you. You are never jealous of something you don’t care about. O.K. enough about jealousy. Now let me tell you something I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers. I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten. I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends. I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes. I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things … but - All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve. Letter to his fiancée Lee, (31 July 1978), published in Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999)

Thank you for taking the time, what a poignant letter indeed. How lovely to hear it read aloud with a polished voice.

@@曾一凡-k4q bless you.

Thank you for doing this.

@@曾一凡-k4q Thank you!

Mathani Ralte If he was my damn teacher, boy, I'd remember EVERYTHING from that class!

Solance Akebana I would be like these girls in Indiana Jones with "I love you" drawn on their eyelids.

So true!!!!

lol I have d same problem with me econ teacher... I must say it is very distracting

And his face

Tina Dambrino I am captivated with his voice and so with the text his reading. Imagining my hubby is reading this letter to me, that I know it's impossible. Lol!

Yes, there are men like him yet, BUT they are not very common, it is so hard to find them.

I think they do. Not like this probably since the English language is so bastardized now.

Dana Michaels well, I am Brazilian and my ex is a fucking bastard with words. I have some e-mails from him absolutly beautiful. That man really loved me.

People today generally can’t write anyway

I don't think my heart would ever let me anyways💀

@@AnArtGuy_1 love your username xD

Really..? Lol 😂 I’m jealous because I love you.??! Wonder how many wife beaters have said that..?! On yer bike mate 🤣

We won't ❤️

But one should also consider their own qualities to attract such a mate, make sure a person isn't "settling for less" with you.

Wow how lucky she is, to have such one to adore her like that. You have the heart in you sir.

@lucialu2x Ma'am* ;) and she loves me just as much. So wonderful in this long life, to have a person like her.

❤

I try cards for the major holidays. Very few to None are reciprocated . Wait ✋ years ago I got lottery tickets LOL Happy St PATRICK'S DAY everyone🫑🥝🍀

You are such a sweet person.

I don't understand how you can judge someone only by his voice.... don't get me wrong, I quite like him aswell but he could be a total asshole behind the voice...yet you think he is some kind of god, ...because of his voice? Women rly need to look further than the outside...men aswell though...

Sara Mosier He could just read off the shopping list for me and I’d melt lol

"Besotted" is my new favorite word.

Gamer GC I did :D

BlueParrot Games Lol... I plead the fifth on if I do that...

You read my mind XD

oh gawd....now i cant stop

Same 🥰

We are here. Just find a man who admires Hiddleston as an actor and a gentleman; he may not be Hiddleston, but he might be decent and loving and romantic. And in this world where life and happiness are so short, grab for what and for whom you can get. Love and Romance are the only things that make life worth living.

Double D -- Too old now.

Double E You write like a beautiful confident soul sir. It's rare. I wish you well.

Double E I relate more with you then all these fangirls. Though I'm a girl. It's Tom's reflection of an ideology or truth and unashamed vulnerability. Something a picture of relationship that we wish to see more of in this life.

Jessica Georgen They got killer by Americans(´∀｀*)

Maybe. This was a letter from a 53 year old man, well established in careers of naturalism and writing, writing to a 29 year old woman. He speaks of what he has learned of himself in his life and his failing first marriage (he was divorced the following year). Lee did marry George in 1979 and remained with him until his death in 1995.

I think you’re missing the point of the letter. You’re definitely missing the point of what he means about jealousy.

Flaws: He... He um... Shit Nope. I got nothing. I'm pretty sure he's perfect.

Nhu Tran This is the opposite of a flaw

Ah at a guess, maybe some cynicism, or geekiness, or the anger and impatience that quick witted people sometimes have. Having to be careful of his look for his work, which can be seen as vanity. Professional and loving his work, which can mean not available day to day, with variations in moods because of the different characters played, can be felt as self centered. Being so gifted and talented that everyone follows them and they have to be very strong willed to not fall into temptation. Being difficult to live with because we could feel that we can never be good enough and people put the people next to him in the shadows, he has to be mindful enough to put himself in the shadows, very hard to do and not instinctive, and he loves the spotlight or he wouldn't work as he does... The people loving him would have to be very sure of themselves, being that talented can attract vultures, which can seriously affect the mental health. Feeling better about it?

i mean its not even overrated that just amazing cause people admire truly flawless people,flaws indeed are sometimes attractive but this man hes just something i cant get over with

@@jenwho1212 this is true and i also understand one thing that people with flaws wont be appreciated much because he is so flawless but one thing is ive seen so many actors and ive seen chaotic and ones with flaws but this human is just genuinely this nice and sane,i dont really think he tries to be that hes absolutely real or else he would break out,im sure he has hardships as well, but im also sure hes a genuine peace and i mean peace so yeah that makes him so different and you know the real world has so much cruelty and chaos going on so people just fall into his peaceful character,im sure he feels bad that he cannot be there for the lot,but he tries. and he loves acting as his proffesion,he isnt for spotlight because he absolutely never complained when his life wasnt this higlighted as it is now. well thats kinda all, we humans want peace after all,its normal for people to be flawed and to be flawless,not everything is bad not everything is good so yeah,maybe his character has a ratio of more sanity in it

If you saw the series about the Durrells in Corfu Gerald Durrell was the youngest son who was an amazing animal lover. It was a lovely series written by Gerald about his English family living in Corfu for 4 years, very financially strapped, and how they managed to thrive in a strange country. It is available on PBS Passport and I cannot recommend it highly enough, you will understand Gerald much better. He was about 30 years older than his wife.

Love the letter!!!!

We do actually. We get rejected anyway and called "creepy" because we aren't rich, handsome, and fit! Ah such a joy to be a man in a matriarchy!

@@StarboyXL9 Maybe, just maybe, women reject you because you blame the rejection on perceived lack of wealth, looks and fitness instead of your actual shortcomings and flaws, likely flaws of character, seeing as you unironically describe the world around you as "matriarchy" ...which is laughable.

@@BoarhideGaming Guys who start with this warped mindset are known as incels. In their subculture, they can become quite dangerous when they become deeply obsessional.

@@janebrown7231 Yeah, I know about incels and MGTOWs and the whole shebang. Scary mindset. There's a good reason militaries and police forces around the world have started teaching their cadets about these groups as potentially dangerous groups.

So true this just made my day

Alessandra Bertoldi Hey winter is the best! Well..........you know When you wake up, it's warm in the bed you look outside the window, you see snow, and boats in the fjord. you see the snowy mountans across the fjord. And you go make a cup of coco sit by the window and listen to this. Now that has to be one of the most fantastical things in life.........ok that guy is magical tho.

Alessandra Bertoldi That's how you brighten up ANY day.

Hi everyone! Not only does he have an exquisite voice with great tonality, he is an exquisite public speaker with great delivery. He matches his body movements and expressions with the reading material. In otherwords, one very consumate Professional ! Hail Tom !

Let's not forget, he's not the one who actually wrote the letter.

No, but he is the who reads it with such a delight, I enjoy listening to his voice.. And by the way he doesn't need to write it, either way he stays one extraordinary and different person in a good way :)

Krisi Bieber​ .......Yeah, I do too.

@@fireruby544 But he could not have read it in that way without connecting very deeply with the emotions it contained.

But I do hope you watched till the end. Its just so beautifully written. The ending always makes me cry, its just so beautiful 😢 .

He was about 30 years older than her when he died, too

He is so nice he is my neighbour and i do swoon when talking to him.

@@ilanataub9169 It would be awesome to be his neighbor, except for the paparazzi hanging out there.

@@ilanataub9169 you are lucky 😀😇

Dam girl I thought he had written it just for me !

If Tom had actually written that narcissist's handbook, we should be running away as fast as possible. Since he didn't, I'll join the queue for him!

Wonder full

Wow

Nice! Vois! Love you tom (Loki)

😂😂👌🏻 so true

Yes, Lafever 1888, and he probably knows how to spell “chocolate”.

@@judeirwin2222 pedant

😂

Talantic What??? hahahaha!!! 😂😁

WTF HAHAHAHA

I've read all of Gerald Durrell's work, and have all of his books too...and HAD NO IDEA about this letter...I even thought it was a made up letter it was so perfect, until I came across your comment and went BACK to the intro of the video...baffled and delighted...I even closed my eyes while listening to visualize such richness in vocabulary. So THANK YOU for pointing it out...I shall cherish this video and look for the letter online, printed and put it inside one of his books. Thank you again.

Thank goodness someone knows who wrote this.

Spent a significant part of my adolescence tracking down his books in Edinburgh's second-hand bookshops. Now they still sit on a bookshelf in pride of place, cheerfully disintegrating. (The old Penguin editions are not the most durable of objects.) For anyone reading: SEEK OUT HIS BOOKS. God they're good - I laughed so hard it hurt at points, and the joy in them is irreplaceable.

Rohna H what a gift he is!

Ugh yeah that would be awful! Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have ever read or heard it though, right? I hope not.

What a scum and ruins this poem for me.

She gracefully cited his alcoholism in the divorce.

That's exactly was I felt. Gosh He ist incredible and touches my heart.

Some do. But no one wishes to hear the words. Too much impatience, too much utilitarian thought, or an inability to comprehend.

😘😘😘😘😘😘

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

Finally - ONE person in the comments who actually knows who Gerald Durrell was. A small spark in the roiling sea of wokeism pop science.

Ma Jane watching this in 2019, lovely poem,, lovely man.

Thank you!

Nicely Said... :)

Well, she married him the following year (1979), co-authored books with him, wrote books of her own about their shared experiences and work, and remained with him until his death in 1995

Kathleen D. I listened to it when I did a book report on that story. Every time I didn't listen to it, I could picture his voice.

Oh, I listened to that too. Especially that one scene..........damn.

seriously, he is so hilarious in such a distinctive way.

You should watch "The Durells in Corfu" George Durell grew up to be an incredible human being author and he brought the first zoo to England that was used to educate people.

You mean Durrell? Who preyed on his first wife when she was 19 and he was 45? I'm sure he wrote similar letters to her, too. But then, I guess after she gave up her budding opera career and her own family to be with him and support his goals, he got a little tired of her after 25 years and started writing letters to the next one, 24 years his junior. At least that one was an adult woman. She should have known better, so I guess they deserved each other. Words are cheap, even beautiful words. But even these words, if you listen closely, give clues to his motivation, his insecure self-centeredness, his condescension, his assumption of his right to be dominant. What some people consider romantic just boggles the mind.

@@anahata2009 I got some of those vibes as well from this letter, but it's unwise to make assumptions without enough data.

@@anahata2009 She stayed with him, although he was an alcoholic, until his death. There are some women who like that sort of man (not me)

All this may be true. Honestly I know nothing of the man except he is the most brilliant, gifted writer I’ve experienced. Who cares if he is not a flawless human as he himself has pointed out! Why be so angry at a dead man?

C A L M Happy St Patrick's day 💤

+Fernanda N. Do you know the context? Gerald Durrell was a world-famous writer and naturalist who was 53 years old when he wrote this; Lee George was 29 and not known at all. What he's saying is that he can't help the fact that people already know who he is and that he's famous and that when they get married, people will think of her as his wife. He's actually apologizing for that. After they did get married, Lee herself became famous and has been inducted by the queen into the Order of the British Empire because of the work she does in her own right as a naturalist. I don't see this letter as selfish and chauvinist; I see it as honest. This is the letter of an extremely famous, middle-aged man who is thoughtful enough to apologize to his much younger fiancee for overshadowing her unintentionally and who is self-aware enough to own up to his jealous streak.

+Amy Thomas thank you. Indeed, I did not know the context, however I could sense the irony of the text at some parts, but at others it does sound selfish, but then again, I understand it is something from a person really in love.

I think that's part of the odd beauty of it - the fact that he's obviously not perfect as a person, but he still has flashes of brilliance.