Arthur Marshall
Sugar Plums
Self Portrait with Friends. The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton 1926-1974
By Richard Buckle (ed)
Weidenfeld 472pp £8.95 order from our bookshop
Which misguided frog was it who dared to say, long ago, that il n’y a pas de lettres ennuyeuses? Can it have been Dumas? It was, at all events, twaddle. Memoirs and biographies and, heaven knows, the daily posts swarm with such letters, as we all know to our cost. However, had the statement concerned diaries, it would have been a different and more accurate kettle of fish. Almost any diary is a fascination, even the purely schoolboy ones ('Got up late. Didn't wash. Had breakfast', and so on right through to the end of an action-packed day: 'Had my supper. Did my teeth. Squeezed my blackheads. Went to bed').
And it was indeed as a Harrow schoolboy that Cecil Beaton began, in I919, the astonishing diary that now fills over 150 notebooks. The volume here before us consists of extracts admirably chosen and assembled by Richard Buckle, who tells us that for Sir Cecil who, in those early days,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation