Chris Williams is professor of Welsh history, director of the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities, and deputy director of the College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University. He lives in Swansea, Wales.
“Come to this volume for the love story, stay for the lit talk. . .
. Burton’s diaries, published now for the first time, are filled
with . . . pocket-size delights. . . . But I admired this
complicated and fairly remarkable book for its deeper and more
insinuating qualities as well.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“The Richard Burton Diaries. Just great fun, and written out of an
engaging, often comical bewilderment: How did a poor Welshman
become not only a star, but a player on the world stage that was
Elizabeth Taylor’s fame? As a kind of celebrity Pilgrim’s Progress,
it is very tender without missing the fact that show business is
hard.”—Hilton Als, NewYorker.com
“Burton loved literature, and how proud he’d have been to know that
in his diaries he demonstrates considerable literary gifts. His
observations about his peers are brilliant. . . . This
indispensable book is meticulously edited by Professor Chris
Williams.”—Roger Lewis, Financial Times
“His diaries are not those of a man afraid to take a harsh look at
himself. . . . He is much more likely, in dealing with his fights
with Taylor, to record his own bad behavior than hers. Conversely,
the diaries are remarkably free of self-congratulation, either for
his achievements as an actor or for his great generosity with
money.”—Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books
“The Richard Burton Diaries . . . offers a compelling insight into
the mind of a major film star.”—Christopher Silvester, Daily
Express
“One might well suppose that Mr. Burton had no interests other than
gossip, money, drink and sex. In fact, there’s quite a bit more to
The Richard Burton Diaries than that. Among other things, Mr.
Burton turns out to have been an exceedingly literate man who had
shrewd opinions about the many books that he read.”—Terry Teachout,
Wall Street Journal
“Of real interest is that Burton was almost as good a writer as an
actor, read as many as three books a day, haunted bookstores in
every city he set foot in, bought countless books on every
conceivable subject and evaluated them rather shrewdly. . . . Apt
writing abounds. . . . His love of language is also displayed
dazzlingly in the recurrent loving tributes to Elizabeth. True, he
also records their fights, but these are quickly forgotten by him
after a good walk, and by both of them after a night’s sleep. Much
more frequent and pertinent are the love declarations.”—John Simon,
New York Times Book Review
“The Richard Burton who emerges from these diaries is a far better
man than even his wildest fan might have expected. He’s so
sensitive, intelligent, deeply well-read and supremely
well-informed that you can almost kid yourself he’d have been fun
to have to dinner. It would be absurd, of course, to call his a
model life. But nobody who has read this book could call it a
wasted one.”—Christopher Bray, Wall Street Journal
“[Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor] made ‘a lovely charming
decadent hopeless couple,’ as Burton notes, in a characteristically
wry and graceful phrase. . . . A captivating story of misplaced
success: Burton was a voracious and astute reader who nurtured
unfulfilled literary ambitions. Even his greatest acting triumphs
were a blow, representing ‘the indignity and the boredom of having
to learn the writings of another man.’”—New Yorker
“He left just this partial, riveting diary, one of the great books
left behind by anyone in the acting profession, and piercing
evidence that the very famous, the very rich, the men with jewels
and yachts may be haunted outcasts who recognize their own
type.”—David Thomson, New Republic
“These diaries offer a delightfully unvarnished glimpse at the
actor’s life, from his reading habits and jet-setting to his
tumultuous relationship with Elizabeth Taylor.”—Los Angeles
Times
“The words reveal someone who is reflective and thoughtful and
someone who engaged intellectually with the world around him. It’s
not just the ale-and-women kind of image. . . . His diaries reveal
a man who thought deeply about the world—past, present and future.
Richard Burton was in search of ‘what it all meant,’ but found
little comfort in the lessons of history. . . . In 1970 he wrote:
‘I love the world but if I take it too seriously I shall go
mad.’”—Simon de Bruxelles, Times (UK)
“So many lurid and appalling books have been written about Burton
and Taylor that it’s hard to see them plain. The Richard Burton
Diaries is, however, true to why tabloid writers flocked to them:
It’s a love story so robust you can nearly warm your hands on its
flames.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“In these pages—which Burton began when he was fourteen and
continued until the year before his death—he strips away the
larger-than-life abstraction that he became for the public to
reveal a human dimension more complex than any biographer could
ever hope to capture. He is sensitive, intelligent, literary,
outwardly and inwardly curious, tender, sometimes boorish and
spiteful but conscious of fair play, wickedly discerning and funny,
surprisingly modest, wildly generous, a delightful gossip, and
virtually never boring—something that would have frightened and
appalled him.”—Mary Hawthorne, New Yorker, “Page-Turner” blog
“Vivid and curiously touching, Burton’s diaries are a telling,
often painfully truthful addition to the social history of the
years between 1960 and 1974.”—Frederic Raphael, Times Literary
Supplement
“This is an absolute treat. Burton’s mass of meditations is swamped
by his love for Elizabeth Taylor.”—Jonathan Dean, Sunday Times
“Burton records his life like a gripping drama, where ‘tomorrow is
always a surprise.’ You miss him when you put the book down. His is
a voice that lingers.”—Sarah Crompton, Daily Telegraph
“The Richard Burton Diaries . . . will fascinate a wide range of
readers. These journal jottings are, in their way, highly
articulate and will thrill people who are captivated by the way the
mystery of private life can be illuminated by the intimate voice of
one of the more notable performers in recent memory, one who was
equally famous as a lover, a drinker and a classical actor.”—Peter
Craven, Weekend Australian
“Forensically detailed, uncynical and unsentimental. . . . The
Richard Burton Diaries is an addictive, articulate compendium that
dazzles and delights throughout its immense length. . . . Most
present day actors would read this and weep at the level of sheer
damned glamour and sexiness flooding his daily life. . . . Every
page provides a glittering revelation. It is the cinema book of the
year.”—Christopher Fowler, Independent on Sunday
“Often melancholy and frequently funny. . . . It is a voice to make
you fall in love with the man.”—Sarah Crompton, Belfast
Telegraph
“Full of surprises and revelations.”—The Bookseller
“Richard Burton Diaries reveal actor’s passion and shame. He was
the boy from the Welsh valleys whose rugged looks and voice of gold
made him a star of stage and screen. . . . He is frank about his
drinking, his ambivalent feelings towards his own talent and the
career that brought him such success.”—londonwired.co.uk
“Stand back! Sally Burton just lit a literary firecracker and
tossed it into the room. The widow of Britain’s greatest film actor
is presiding over the long-awaited publication of her late
husband’s diaries and they are beyond explosive.”—Christopher
Wilson, Daily Telegraph
“Irresistible. . . . [Burton’s] diaries offer a rare and fresh
perspective on his life and career, as well as on the glamorous
decades of the mid-20th century.”—Sight and Sound
“Oh, what a pleasure reading Richard Burton’s diaries has proved!
Not only packed with soundbites . . . they also demonstrate what we
first knew from Melvyn Bragg’s 1988 biography: that if Burton had
not chosen to be an actor he could easily have enjoyed a
flourishing career as author, critic or even academic. . . . Chris
Williams, the editor, is a Welsh academic, and it shows. . . . He
nails even the most obscure Welsh allusion.”—Finches Quarterly
Review
“Diaries? Autobiography? Time will tell, and may surprise.”—Emlyn
Williams, at Richard Burton’s Memorial Service, London, August
1984
“Diaries? Autobiography? Time will tell, and may surprise.”—Emlyn
Williams, at Richard Burton’s Memorial Service, London, August
1984
*Emplyn Williams*
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