DEAD, VAST AND MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

One of my Christmas presents this year was Richard Burton’s diaries - a real doorstopper of a book.   Absolutely everything has been included regardless of how repetitive, banal, trivial or uninformative.  It is hard to write a diary whose greater part doesn’t suffer from these characteristics and Burton’s is no exception, but a decent editing job would have produced a book a third the size and much more informative. The editor (Chris Williams of Swansea University who have custody of Burton’s ‘papers’) has also included a mass of footnotes many of which serve little elucidatory purpose.  You might ask then why anyone should want to read it. 


The answer is because the diaries are like gold ore. Among the 'dead vast and middle of the night' entries are brilliant flashes, dramatic observations, fascinating accounts of people and places, illusions and self-deceptions, strengths and vulnerabilities, which make the writing as interesting as the acting.

I am a great fan of Burton and have often been entranced by that magic voice.  I can also remember standing on stage once in front of a 650 watt spotlight struggling to deliver a particular speech and turning to him in my head for help.  Quick as a flash I heard his voice telling me to concentrate on pronouncing each word; if I did this the line would follow, he said.  Whether it was my imagination or the great man taking pity on a fellow thesp what he suggested seemed to work and I drank his health in the bar afterwards.

Though why it is that we drink people’s health, I have no idea.  Booze did for Burton in the end just as it has done for so many of the great and good.  Still it is said that people who drink moderately live longer than those who don’t.  I used to wonder whether this really meant anything in that some of the most miserable people that I have met have been elective teetotallers.  And if one thing kills you faster than alcohol it is misery.  But however would we manage social occasions without it? 

Such as, for instance, Twelfth Night, a long forgotten part of the Winter Festivities calendar which I have been doing my bit all my life to resurrect.  Among our little theatre group here we have now a tradition of doing something on the evening of 5th or 6th January: the jury is still out on which is the correct date.  This year we read a play - Patrick Barlow’s 39 Steps adaptation, which is currently touring the country.  Fourteen people came in all, including a ventriloquist’s dummy called Sonny Goy, and a very good time was had by all.

In the invitation we stated that nibbles would be on offer but so many people brought food that we have been living on leftovers.  But why is it that everyone brings red wine to parties and then asks for white?  My stock of white wine is now seriously deleted but I have enough red wine to float a battleship.  I think I shall have to specify something about this on the invitations next year.

Actually this week I have been ill, sunk by the same virus that seems to be knocking on everyone’s door and I was driven to my bed.  I cannot remember the last time that this happened. My brain refused to function and all I wanted to do was sleep.  The business carried on however and we have had quite a few orders which I struggled to despatch in my dressing gown.  I am better now but a week has gone by with no work done on the Boraya project.  I have printed out the text and it is now a great thick mass of paper.  The next step is to read it. But I am finding this difficult.  Other people have writers’ block, I have readers’ block.  This doesn’t reflect on the text; the few pages I have read are not bad, though I say it myself.  It is hard, though, not to keep spotting the infelicities of a first draft and the bits that will require reworking and so only half my mind is focused on the reading and the other on something else.  Still, I expect I shall get there, if the business gives me half a chance.

Meanwhile I shall read Burton.  At one point in his diary he says ‘if only I didn’t have to work then I might write a book or something.’ Richard, I know the feeling well, though you could, you know, have just walked out on the picture studios, bought a little place in the south of France and set about a life of scribbling or perhaps teaching at Oxford.  But it is all too late. I wish though I had your capacity for speed reading - two or three books a day - and with the ability to retain what I’d read.  What a turbo-charged mind!