Sheridan Morley
Another vintage year for indiscreet diaries from Roy Strong (The Roy Strong Diaries, Weidenfeld, £20) to Colin Clark (Younger Brother, Younger Son, HarperCollins, £19.99). For those who take their history straighter, Katharine Graham's Personal History (Weidenfeld, £25) is the memoir of the year, and tells us who really still runs Washington, which is in fact the author. Her account of a mad and then suicidal husband, a President out to get her, and the Iron Lady beating the odds should already have become a movie if only Amer- ica's other great Kate, Hepburn, weren't already way past it.
Elsewhere, we'll have to wait awhile for the true stories of this autumn's nervous breakdowns at just about every arts institu- tion in town, but Paul Donovan's All Our Todays (Cape, £15.99) doubles as a useful history of Radio 4 at the crisis crossroads. Mike Read's biography of Rupert Brooke (Mainstream, £17.50) is unlikely to be over- taken, and on the gay front we've had hilar- ious accounts of Nancy Spain (A Trouser-Wearing Woman by Rose Collis, Cassell, £20) and the post-Wilde hysteria of Pemberton Billing in Philip Hoare's Wilde's Last Stand (Duckworth, £16.95). Otherwise there were all too many Wilde reprints, including my own; but there was a superb Diaghilev documentary from John Drum- mond (Speaking of Diaghilev, Faber, £20) and an expert collection of the journalism of John Betjeman (Coming Home, edited by Candida Lycett-Green, Methuen, £20).
Arnold Wesker's brilliant Birth of Shylock and Death of Zero Mostel (Quartet, £12) and the Steven Berkoff memoirs (Faber, £7.99) should discourage any local thespians wishing still for a Broadway career, while David Ambrose's Hollywood Lies (Macmillan, £15.99), will do much the same deterrent work for California.
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