The Richard Burton Diaries (281 page)

186
Anthony Powell,
A Question of Upbringing
(1951).

187
The character's name is Kenneth Widmerpool. There are 12 volumes in the
A Dance to the Music of Time
cycle.

188
John Braine (1922–86),
Life at the Top
(1957).

189
Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), poet.

190
A reference to Lewis Carroll's ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ (1872) which includes the lines ‘Of shoes—and ships—and sealing–wax — / Of cabbages—and kings’.

191
George Baker (1931–2011), whose greatest success was on British television portraying Inspector Reginald Wexford (1987–2000), created by Ruth Rendell (1930—).

192
Anthony Powell,
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
(1960).

193
Burton refers here to Evelyn Waugh,
A Little Learning
(1964), p. 201, where Waugh writes of Powell: ‘In reading his brilliant series of novels I have sometimes thought – and indeed, have been so foolish as to state as much in a review – that the recurring seemingly haphazard conjunctions of human life, which comprise his theme, pass beyond plausibility. His hero's passage through youth and early manhood is continually recrossed in improbable circumstances by the same characters. After I had written the review expressing doubts of the authenticity of so many coincidences, I began to reflect on my own acquaintance with him and understood that his was genuine social realism.’

194
Burton is using poetic licence here. The relevant passage which inspires his invented quotation comes in the first chapter of Powell's fourth novel,
At Lady Molly's
(1957), in which Mildred Haycock, once Mildred Blaides, arrives at a party with her fiancé, who happens to be Kenneth Widmerpool, younger than Mildred by about ten years, and known to the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins.

195
Nicholas Monsarrat,
Smith and Jones
(1963).

196
Agatha Christie,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
(1926).

197
Oleg Lyalin (1937–95) of the KGB (the Soviet intelligence service) had been revealed as a defector on 30 September.

198
Mostar: north-west of Dubrovnik and inland, today in Bosnia Herzegovina.

199
Pop music associated with Liverpool in the 1960s.

200
Wednesday was 6 October.

201
Robert Newton (1905–56), who had acted with Burton in
The Desert Rats
. Bernard Lee (1908–81), who had acted with Burton in
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
. Trevor Howard (1913–88). Errol Flynn (1909–59).

202
Walter Mitty is the daydreaming character in James Thurber's American short story, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ (1939). It is possible that Burton means something else entirely.

203
This is a rather oblique reference to the central character in the Indian Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata.

204
Juan Fangio (1911–95); Stirling Moss (1929—), racing drivers.

205
Trotsky lived at Viena 45, Mexico City.

206
Burton had played the part of Sir Toby Belch in the Old Vic production of
Twelfth Night
, and Caliban in the Old Vic production of
The Tempest
.

207
Alain Delon (1935—), who would play Frank Jackson in
The Assassination of Trotsky
.

208
Romy Schneider (1938–82), who would play the part of Gita Samuels in
The Assassination of Trotsky.
Delon and Schneider had been engaged from 1959 to 1963.

209
The film is
Bloomfield
(1971), directed by Richard Harris and Uri Zohar (1934—).

210
Bay of Biscay.

211
A reference to Zeus as a swan seducing L
da.

212
Rocco and His Brothers
(1960), directed by Luchino Visconti. Renato Salvatori (1934–88) won many plaudits for his part in the film.

213
Delon had been questioned in connection with a police investigation into the murder of Stevan Markovi
(1937–68), one of his bodyguards, in 1968. Markovi
's body had been found outside Delon's Paris home. There had been a considerable press furore surrounding the murder, which had also involved Georges Pompidou.

214
Medea, Greek mythological princess of Colchis, with a reputation for hysteria vengeance and ruthlessness.

215
Liz: wife of Brook Williams. Mick: business partner of Brook Williams.

216
Friday was 8 October.

217
Victor Serge (1890–1947),
Memoirs of a Revolutionary
(1963). Serge's real name was Victor Lvovich Kibalchich.

218
The passage (reproduced accurately by Burton) is to be found on p. 195 of Serge's volume, and refers to Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925).

219
Burton is referring to the direction taken by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

220
Saturday was 9th October.

221
Marian, Richard's cousin, whose husband Carl Mastroianni died in 1971.

222
Burton may mean Sunningdale, near Ascot, in Berkshire, which is about 20 miles from Reading.

223
Mcdonald may refer to the art director on
Boom!
, Richard Macdonald, who was production designer on
Secret Ceremony
, would be production designer on
The Assassination of Trotsky
, and later on
Exorcist II
.

224
Losey had directed
The Go-Between
(1970).

225
Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), Vietnamese revolutionary leader.

226
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(1958), directed by Richard Brooks (1912–92).

227
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
was an American television comedy show.

228
Valentina Cortese (1923—) played the part of Natalia or Natasha Trotsky.

229
This may be what appeared in
Harper's Bazaar
(April 1972), 126–9, as ‘Ten Years Since Scandal Time’.

230
Powell,
The Military Philosophers
(1968).

231
King Constantine II of Greece (1940—) and his wife Queen Anne-Marie (1946—), who had fled Greece in 1967. The Greek monarchy was abolished in 1973.

232
Farah Pahlavi (1938—), Shahbanu (rather than Shahrina) of Iran.

233
It may have been ‘the dust of eld’, used in the first chapter of
The Military Philosophers
.

234
Alexei Kosygin (1904–80) was attacked by Hungarian refugee Geza Matrai shouting ‘Freedom for Hungary!’

235
Hamlet
, Act II, scene ii: ‘I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?’

236
The Savage is Loose
was made into a film in 1974, directed by George C. Slott (1927–99).

237
This would become the film
Divorce His, Divorce Hers
(1973).

238
Jean Desailly (1920–2008) played Alfred Rosmer and Simone Valère (1921–2010) played Marguerite Rosmer. Desailly and Valère were real life partners, later husband and wife.

239
In fact it was Seva Trotsky, Trotsky's nephew, played by Marco Lucantoni.

240
Jeffrey Archer (1940—), then MP for Louth.

241
Lew Grade (1906–98), of Associated Television (ATV). St John Ambulance, a charity teaching first aid and offering ambulance services.

242
Pablo Neruda (1904–73). Salvador Allende (1908–73), President of Chile.

243
In 1962 the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916–2004), James Dewey Watson (1928—) and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (1916–2004), ‘for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids’.

244
Alfred Nobel (1833–96) invented dynamite.

245
Winston Churchill actually won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

246
Sunday was 24 October.

247
Harry Saltzman (1915–94), producer of
Look back in Anger
, and then all the James Bond films up to
The Man with the Golden Gun
(1974).

248
Baruch Spinoza (1632–77),
Tractatus Politicus
(1677), ‘I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.’

249
Burton was agreeing to perform in a production for Harlech Television of what would become
Divorce His, Divorce Hers
.

250
The
Compact OED
was published in 1971, reducing the original 13 volumes to two.

251
Michael Linnit, theatrical agent. Linnit & Dunfee was a theatre management company.

252
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962),
Steppenwolf
(1927; English translation 1929).

253
Robin: Friend of Michael Wilding.

254
The diary entries from this day until 10 November are either typed in red or underlined in red.

255
Sheldon Harte, the character played by Carlos Miranda.

256
Time
, 8 April 1940.

257
‘Dear Abby’ was a syndicated advice column written at the time by Pauline Phillips (1918—) using the pen name Abigail Van Buren.

258
Cecil Gee, a London menswear store. John Elias o Fon (1774–1841), a famous Welsh Nonconformist preacher. Frankie Howerd (1917–92), actor and comedian.

259
Mr Micawber, in chapter 12 of Dickens's
David Copperfield
, says, ‘My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do to-day. Procrastination is the thief of time.’

260
Fiumicino airport, Rome.

261
Stansted airport, Essex.

262
The ‘ould sod’: Ireland.

263
The Post Office Tower in central London was bombed by the IRA on 31 October 1971.

264
James Joyce. Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘Pied Beauty’, includes the line ‘All things counter, original, spare, strange’.

265
Brigitte Bardot (1934—), actor and model. Roger Vadim (1928–2000), actor, director, husband of Bardot (1952–7), later of Jane Fonda (1965–73).

266
Charles Baudelaire (1821–67),
Les Fleurs du Mal
(1857). These lines do not appear to be a direct quotation from
Les Fleurs du Mal
, although they may owe something to Baudelaire's ‘Le Gouffre’.

267
Ohrbach's: an American department store.

268
Thursday was 4 November, as Burton had previously entered.