John Osborne
Having cast it aside myself, I seem to have spent most of the year reading autobiography. Streets ahead of the pack is Dirk Bogarde's A Short Walk from Harrods (Viking, £15.99), his sixth volume of recol- lection and outstandingly the best. It shows that there can be muscle in despair and that men who write like this never grow old. The best 'young' book was Stand Before Your God by Paul Watkins (Faber, £14.99), a wry and robust account of an American's education at the Dragon School and Eton, subtitled 'Growing up to be a Writer', and that he most confidently is. The most difficult book for me was Tony Richardson's Long Distance Runner (Faber, £17.50), a brutally self-disparaging and selective account of his vibrant and voracious spirit. T R was a gangling fire- work of profligacy, intrigue, energy and unique inspiration, just a few pence short of genius. Compare and contrast, as they used to say, with Peter Hall. Rarely can cold ambition have striven to express itself with such an overweening whine as in Making an Exhibition of Myself (Sinclair- Stevenson, £20). Why did he bother? It's not only shifty but a lacklustre read.
Previous page
