‘The illusion of biography is that real people are not perishable and that they can be restored,’ writes Roger Lewis in the opening pages of his soon-to-be published biography of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor Erotic Vagrancy. ‘But people are perishable. They come to an end, go out of fashion, require exegesis… The nearer you… Continue reading Richard, Elizabeth, Roger and Jake: lives pinned upon the page
Read more
It is odd to be knocked sideways by the death of someone who is 100 years old, and yet Ronnie Blythe’s departure last weekend has come as a shock. The friendship of Ronnie was compared by his friend a fellow-writer Roger Deakin to an old oak – something that always seemed to have been there,… Continue reading Ronnie Blythe: the death of a tribal storyteller
Read more
In about 1997, I was sharing a bottle of wine with my good friend and neighbour Roger Deakin in the garden of Walnut Tree Farm, his house in the Waveney Valley. Although his life was going through a period of restlessness and change, Roger was in good form. He was going to write a book,… Continue reading ‘I began to dream of secret swimming holes and a journey of discovery….’ Roger Deakin, ten years on.
Read moreDid Anne Frank have sex? The unlikely and, some might say, impertinent question has been raised in the publicity surrounding the publication in the autumn of a novel for teenagers called Annexed. The book’s author, Sharon Dogar, is said to have included “intimate scenes” in what is a fictional diary of Frank’s close friend Peter… Continue reading The dead are public property
Read more
