I discovered “I”’s first name from her lover, whom she calls “E” in the diaries. He first crops up when “I” is 19 and has a temporary job at Cambridge public library, but their first meeting occurred five years earlier. He was her private piano teacher: kind, supportive, good enough (he said) to be a concert pianist, and grotesquely irresponsible. He allowed a young girl’s adulation to get out of hand. He is also spiteful, petty-minded and a prig. “I” reports hundreds of his sayings: “E said I am a silly ass”; “E said I am stupid”; “E said I am 14 years old [this written when she was 20]. I am not ripe enough yet”; “E said I was weak in every way.” Over the 25 years of their intense, abusive relationship, he demolished her confidence and ruined her ambitions. Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a unique, original and hilarious novel. The first is that my 148 diaries represent only about one eighth of the total number of volumes Laura wrote. It turns out that I don’t have a single complete year after 1962, and that almost all the 70s, the second half of both the 60s and 80s, and most of the 90s are missing. Estimating from the gaps in my collection, the correct total number of books is closer to 1,000, or 40m words. Laura was the most prolific diarist in known history.

grāmata gandrīz derētu Ziemassvētku lasāmlistē, jo, kā jau kārtīga dienasgrāmata, sākas 1. janvārī, un beidzas 31. decembrī (ar tam piedienošu svētku noskaņu). Braiens ir šķirtenis tā ap 40+, kurš vada dienas neiedvesmojošā darbā, iet uz vīzdegunīgu grāmatu klubiņu (pilnīgi ne tādu kā mūsējais), kuram nekad nav sagatavojies, un daudz jaukāku dzejas klubu. Lai gan jaukajā dzejas klubā ir tikpat jaukā Liza, neizbēgt arī no savas darvas piles, un to sauc Tobijs Salts - dzejnieks, kura vēl neiznākušais krājums jau ir nodēvēts par gada dzejas grāmatu (un no kura pāris dzejas rindām jums jau smadzenes saiet ķīselī). Un kad Tobijs Salts/Enemy No 1 mīklaini pazūd, Braiena problēmām - nespēja uzrakstīt neko jēdzīgu, darba zaudēšana, sarežģītas attiecības ar pusauga dēlu, kurš, šķiet, labāk saprotas ar savas mātes jauno bojfrendu/seriālo iedvesmotāju, pievienojas arī policijas apciemojumi un nedabiskā interese par viņa dienasgrāmatu. Stāsts pats varbūt ir diezgan vienkāršs (un mietpilsonisks kā mūsu vairākuma dzīves), bet dzejas rindas ir burvīgas, smieklīgas un ar dažādām lieliskām atsaucēm. Un bija jauks un negaidīts sižeta pavērsiens. Un skaisti par to, kā bieži vien vieglāk ir rakstīt, nekā runāt, kā reizēm vārdu ir par daudz, kā var nepietikt ar visu gudro vārdu zināšanu.

Contact Us

Achingly funny. Without doubt it should win next year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for the best comic novel, even if my own novel is in contention as well -- Jonathan Coe I have long envied artists who draw and sketch each day; who are able to transform ordinary visual experience into art – I imagine it to be a joy. Flora would listen patiently, wait a few more months, then make her point again: had I read all the diaries? No. Had I read above a third of them? No. So, I hadn’t studied them properly. Unless I arranged the books chronologically, I couldn’t know how everything tied together, and therefore could not make a proper study of the contents. So many of my unconscious assumptions about Laura had been false. How many others were? The pseudonymous Brian Bilston turns the base metal of comic verse into gold . . . Imagine a mash-up of John Cooper Clarke, Ed Reardon's Week and James Joyce, and you're about halfway there . . . Bilston is a magician with words . . . Read this novel in short bursts, pausing to savour its individual brilliancies * Guardian * Laura and I are now friends. She has read the biography I have written of her life twice, and approved it all.

Orton remains a compelling central character, George Kemp capturing his chutzpah, his humour, his confidence that never grew to curdle into arrogance. Orton, with the eye of a triple outsider (gay, working class and provincial) saw the absurdity in a London that wasn't quite swinging and skewered it. If you like a) laughing or b) words which rhyme with each other, you will love Brian Bilston -- Richard Osman Toby Osmond told QX, “This fantastic play, based on the diary of Joe Orton is as exciting as the stars it stars. Orton’s tragically short life was a roller coaster – a big part of which was Halliwell, who I have the privilege to play. I cannot wait to tread the boards again – my first time since Game of Thrones finished – and inhabit this doomed lover and killer.” It's all well-trodden ground these days, but it still hurts knowing what fate awaits Joe, so full of life, and Ken, so trapped in his own neurosis, unable to arrest its descent into psychosis. But, as alluded to above, it's not all quite the same as it was.Abruptly the squall ends. The bleeding stops. Nizzy comes home and turns out to be his mother. She tells him to stop fussing. Our mystery diarist hasn’t been stabbed, slashed his wrists or fallen out of a window into a greenhouse. He’s suffering “because of my sex”. The poor man is having his period. Nobody must find out about this unique gem, because I’m giving it to EVERYONE, and I want to appear clever and discerning.’ – Dawn French At one point in the early 1960s, in her 20s, she was living in poverty in London. Like every young, healthy, intelligent, imaginative, gifted person, she was full of wild and impossible plans. The handwriting in these volumes is urgent. Some entries are thousands of words long. She is trying to capture every second of her day. Occasionally, pressed on by her excitement, her handwriting wobbles and she resorts to underscoring: “injure, atmosphere, doesn’t believe me!! so hungry! I’ll kill them!” Taken verbatim from Joe Orton's private and often explicit diaries, this raucous and poignant new production is directed by Nico Rao Pimparé (The Start of Nothing, 2020; Rainer, Arcola Theatre; Candy, King's Head Theatre). The cast is completed by Jemma Churchill (Doctor Who, BBC; Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present, New Vic Theatre; NATIVITY! The Musical, UK tour), Jamie Zubairi (Cucumber, Why The Lion Danced, Yellow Earth; The Letter; Wyndham's Theatre), Sorcha Kennedy (Rainer; Arcola Theatre, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Comedy of Errors - Sam Wanamaker Festival; Shakespeare's Globe) and Ryan Rajan Mal, making his stage debut. Director, Nico Rao Pimparé does handle this well, and uses a number of techniques to try and minimise the disruption. Having quite so many characters isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it shows Orton and Halliwell’s day to day life in more vivid detail, although having to take on such a variety of different personalities, and accents, proves more challenging for some of the cast than others.

He's a bit of a likeable fool. I particularly loved how Brian would enter a bookshop for one particular book and just had to buy a few more to keep it company. I'm sure that resonates with every book lover. Brian Bilston has decided to write a poem every day for a year while he tries to repair his ever-desperate life. His ex-wife has taken up with a new man, a marketing guru and motivational speaker who seems to be disturbingly influencing his son, Dylan. Meanwhile Dylan’s football team keeps being beaten 0–11, as he stands disconsolately on the wing waiting vainly to receive the ball. At work Brian is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and is becoming increasingly confused by the complexities of modern communication and management jargon. So poetry will be his salvation. But can Brian’s poetry save him from Toby Salt, his arch nemesis in the Poetry Group and potential rival suitor to Brian’s new poetic inspiration, Liz? Worst of all Toby has announced that boutique artisan publishing house Shooting from the Hip will be publishing his first collection, titled This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleft, in the autumn. And when he goes missing Brian is inevitably the number one suspect. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is the most original novel you will read this year. Diary of a Somebody by Brian Bilston – eBook DetailsI missed my nameless pronoun. An abstract that had a few minutes before floated everywhere had been crushed into a particular. I liked this woman, whatever her name. I enjoyed her clumsiness and her obsessions and her occasional desires for an outburst of violence. I thought I recognised a lot of her qualities in myself. I wanted to understand her. Biographers often report that they enjoy a private relationship with their subject that is (even when this is impossible, because the subject is dead) shared on both sides. So what if Laura was called Laura? Laura was everywhere. Brian Bilston is a laureate for our fractured times, a wordsmith who cares deeply about the impact his language makes as it dances before our eyes -- Ian McMillan I”’s curse began when she was 14, took over her life when she was 20, at its worst ruined three weeks out of every four (one lost to fear, one to pain, one to exhaustion), caused her to lose around 36 litres of blood and membrane, and was not considered bad enough to need medical attention.

You probably get the picture that Brian makes a few mistakes during the course of the book, but it's impossible to do anything but like him. Jemma Churchill who played Orton’s agent, Peggy Ramsey, and voiced Edna Wellthorpe (Mrs), occasionally stole the show, and certainly had the biggest laugh of the night with the line ‘my vagina has come up the size of a football’. The rest of the chorus followed with some impressive character work, especially Jamie Zubairi as Kenneth Williams and Sorcha Kennedy as Miss Boynes. The direction, by Nico Rao Pimparé was well thought through, although some scene changes felt a little laboured.

Popular Sections

Our eponymous hero, Brian Bilston, starts the year with the intention of writing a poem a day. Whilst that goes by the wayside some days, we are still treated to many poems of the very clever and mostly rhyming variety that I love. The poems form the first part of the entries in Brian's diary over the course of a year of numerous ups and downs for him. You feel three generations of gay liberation (and catch a glimpse of a fourth, linked to race) in Nico Rao Pimparé's revival of John Lahr's play, Diary Of A Somebody. I knew I should take all three boxes to Cambridge police station and, if they remained unclaimed, after a suitable time have them incinerated. I was a Peeping Tom to do anything else. The writer describes things in a way that makes it clear she never expected or wanted anyone else to hear about them, let alone put them in a biography.