The Richard Burton Diaries by Richard Burton, Chris Williams Page A

coded messages, and, as a consequence, are rarely difficult to decipher. But they were not written in the polished, carefully crafted style of Burton's published articles for newspapers and magazines. Instead they read as rough notes, ideas, memories, a daily catalogue of people and places, meals and conversations. They functioned as a private record of his life, an aide-memoire to which he presumably intended to return at some future, unspecified date.
    For precisely what purpose he would return was nowhere made explicit – but it seems that Burton regarded writing the diary as a good habit, a corrective to what he believed was his latent idleness, a way of forcing himself to ‘keep my mind in some kind of untidy order’ (9 January 1969). In such comments we may discern an awareness of the redemptive value of labour, and an obeisance to a Nonconformist work ethic. Burton was not someone who was content with his personality, with his achievements or his prospects. He was undeniably restless, predominantly dissatisfied, measuring himself against his ambitions and against the achievements of others. Diary-keeping was one record of that persistent itch, that yearning to achieve, to become, to realize.
    But Burton could also be dismissive of his diary-writing efforts, referring to ‘today's entry for the idiot stakes’ (13 November 1968), ‘this pathetic journal’ (20 March 1969) which was ‘stupendously tedious’ (15 June 1970). Sometimes he struggled to complete a single page of typescript; on other days the words kept flowing. When he stopped keeping the diary the reasons were occasionally given in retrospect – too many things happening (‘when events tumble over each other I don't write it down’ – 1 November 1969), ‘acute unhappiness’ (20 March 1969), drinking too much, sleeping too late, not feeling he had anything worth recording (‘[w]hen faced with this machine latterly I feel as dull as drinkwater’ – 31 May 1970). But often there was no explanation provided for the gaps, and there is no comment at all in the diaries from 1975 or later in the more substantial run of diaries dating from 1965 to 1972. The only extraneous evidence in these later years comes from an interview conducted by the talk-show host Dick Cavett in 1980. Asked about his diaries, Burton responded:
    They are virtually unreadable ... I have occasionally had a glance back ... but in actual fact I haven't only very sporadically [ sic ] written the diary for the last three or four years ... and I said to a great friend of mine he said ‘how's the journal?’ because occasionally I take bits from the journal and elaborate on them and they get published you know Ladies’ Home Journal, Vogue magazine, the people who pay the most money, Cosmopolitan , that stuff, but very rarely, I've only published about ten pieces in my life. But I said ... why do you think the impulse to write has temporarily I hope just died, and he said it's perfectly obvious, you're too happy. And I thought butI've been happy before and I kept on writing and I still can't work it out it. Anyway it does continue occasionally.
    Rarely, it would appear, did Burton re-read his entries or attempt to develop a narrative that spanned successive days. On 23 July 1969 he commented that he ‘must start putting this diary together. I just slide it into the nearest drawer and so can't look back and find out what I wrote or didn't write about what or who or which.’
    There is the possibility that Burton thought he would some day write his autobiography. In October 1968 he recorded that he had been offered a million dollars for a month's worth of the diary. He was not entirely convinced that it would be interesting, and thought the notion ‘mad’. In August 1976 agent Robbie Lantz wrote to Burton concerned by a report that had reached him that Burton might be writing a book, presumably an autobiography; there is no record of Burton's reply. 10 Burton was lukewarm, from the