The Richard Burton Diaries by Richard Burton, Chris Williams

first question, it seems highly unlikely that anyone close to Richard would not have known that he was keeping a diary. It may well be that his 1940 diary was a birthday gift, and we know that Elfed James wrote (abusively) in it. The 1960 diary was probably viewed by Burton's wife Sybil. The 1965 diary was a gift from Elizabeth Taylor, who also contributed some entries. Thereafter, although Burton remains almost the only person to write in his diaries (Elizabeth Taylor contributes a handful more entries, and there is one – ‘Richard is the best’ – by Brook Williams in 1970) he usually typed up his day's account on one of his portable typewriters, often in full view of family and household members. The fact that Richard kept a diary, for certain periods of his life at least, was a matter of public record – commented on in interviews and noted in correspondence.
    If Burton was disinclined to secrecy in the matter of diary-keeping, to what degree did he seek to keep their contents private? As already noted, Elizabeth Taylor herself wrote in some of the diaries. Thereafter, there is no evidence that Richard sought to conceal the contents of his diaries from his second wife. In fact he appears to have encouraged her to dip in and out as she wished, remarking on 31 December 1968 that Taylor had ‘free access’ and that the diary's contents ‘normally gave her a giggle’. And, in August 1980, we find Burton reading passages from his diary out to his third wife Susan.
    If Burton's diaries were open, at least to his wives, then one would think this must have affected what he chose to include in them. We have some evidence of self-censorship: in August 1971 he refrained from committing to paper his worries about Elizabeth's mother's state of health for fear of Elizabeth coming across his entries. Yet at the same time Burton could be remarkably frank about the state of his relationship with Taylor, and unabashed about detailing some of her medical conditions. The explanation may be that Burton felt comfortable with a ‘warts and all’ portrait of his marriage, providing he was reassured that his writing would not be studied by anyone other than himself and Taylor. There is very little evidence, for example, of the children, members of the entourage, or of friends reading the diaries. 8
    In January 1969 Burton noted that he could not find ‘the last volume of my diary’, and thinks he must have put it ‘in such a safe place ... that I cannot remember’. This turns out to be the case – the diaries were in the wine cellar at Chalet Ariel. But he worried ‘[i]t wouldn't be very nice if it got into the wrong hands. It's too revealing about other people, but above all about myself. It's supposed to be for the old age of E and myself.‘ 9
    If this suggests that Burton had a very restricted sense of the audience for the diaries, at least at the time of writing, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, it also raises the question of why Burton was keeping a diary in the first place. The answer here necessarily excludes the 1940 and 1960 diaries, which would not appear to have been kept as part of any grand design. And there is very little direct evidence: when Burton starts the 1965 diary he does not open with any kind of prospectus or justification. This raises the possibility that there was an earlier diary begun in 1964, perhaps following his marriage to Taylor, but we have no evidence of that. Perhaps, rather than attempting to set out a rationale for what he was doing, Burton just got on and did it. He may well not have been entirely clear in his own mind precisely what his objective was.
    If one confines oneself to the ‘diary years’ sequence of 1965 to 1972, then it may be argued that they were not kept with a view to being published in their raw state. They were written in relatively fluent English (though with typing errors and a surprisingly haphazard grasp of spelling), substantially free ofabbreviations or