The Orton Diaries: Including the Correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and Others (Hardcover)

Through Joe's words we encounter him visiting the Beatles and Brian Epstein to present them with a film script..his enduring friendship with Kenneth Williams (a sad, suffering individual who never really came to terms with his sexuality) the seamier, seedier side of Joe's world: "cottaging" in the Holloway Road and rent boys in Morocco.

The pivotal relationship in the book is naturally Joe's partner Kenneth Halliwell. Halliwell was originally a svengali figure to Joe as he encouraged Joe's talent for writing...as Joe's star ascended, Kenneth's descended and he was extremely bitter and jealous; quote: "All you people that are mad on Joe have no idea what he is like"..Halliwell found it humiliating to play second fiddle to Orton; finding himself pushed further and further into the background and relegated to role of "housewife"

On the 9th August 1967, some 9 or so months after starting the diaries Halliwell would be Orton's Nemesis and murdered him in a brutal, explosive rage - staving his head in (police would find brain matter and blood spattered all over the walls in the bedsit) then taking a overdose of Nembutal - the suicide note stated that the diaries held the explanation for this savage attack.

Mysteriously the diaries ended on 1st August - with Orton murdered on the 9th August. This was very unusual for Orton who wrote every day in his diary - this has led some to speculate what could have been the content of the final entries - if indeed they existed.

A fascinating, campy tour-de-force of 1960's London.

First, it's a superb portrait of a great creative artist: Orton was one of our best modern playwrights who in his all-too-brief life produced some classics. What he might have given the world if he had lived --- today he would be 73 --- is anybody's guess, but the three truly great plays that he left us with are still loved to this day.
Second, it's an equally marvelous sketch of 1960s London at its most swinging --- groovy baby! Orton casually rubs shoulders with The Beatles, Kenneth Williams and countless other famous figures when the Smoke was the international Capital of Cool.
Third, they are uproariously funny. I have (no false modesty here!) a great sense of humour but relatively few things, books included, make me actually laugh out loud. This book does. Better yet, it STILL does so after about fifteen years and so many re-readings I've lost count.
(I thought about adding: Fourthly, he's also a famous son of my home city of Leicester, but thought better of it!).
Orton's diary is a true, proper diary, genuinely written day to day by himself as an exercise in reflection and self-knowledge. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Buy it, read it, re-read it, treasure it. You'll laugh (often, loud and long), think, and in the end be made sad. Sheer brilliance.