Something Sensational to Read in the Train: The Diary of a Lifetime [Paperback]

One of teh things I hate most about celebrity biographies is that they rarely deliver what they promise, no dishing teh dirt on celebrities. What makes this different is as it is written in diary form you get what the author really thinks about people and the situations he finds himself in. It is by no means a celebrity kiss and tell book, but the authors diaries from young boy to the year 2000, and as it was written as it happened it's detailed, witty and entertaining. The author is just as deprecating about himself - when others criticise him or things go round he records it faithfully.

I discovered loads about GB that I didn't know, the people he knew and were friends with range from Michael Redgrave, via John Gieguld to Barbara Windsor and his depiction of their friendship and his work and life is just touching, hilarious and a complete page turner.

As Gyles Brandreth reminds us towards the end of the book in a touching letter to his now departed but closest friend Simon Cadell, the likelihood is that he (Gyles) will mainly be remembered for wearing silly jumpers on breakfast TV. Indeed that is the perception which I have labored under for many years and thought there was not much more to him than a smug grin and the ability to find his way on to trashy day time television programmes.

How wrong I have been. In these diaries (covering the period 1959 to 2000) we meet Gyles the boy and the man. There are many things which make this an absorbing read.The first is the quality of the writing. Even the diaries he wrote as a teenager convey a huge intellect and his comments on some of the great plays and performers he saw at that age show huge shrewdness and perspicacity of judgement.

We also get to know a man of enormous intellectual curiosity whose life seems to have taken him down many paths from a young age: prison reform, Lord Longford's pornography committee, broadcasting, columnist, fund raiser, entrepreneur, politician etc.

There is no doubt that what makes this book so readable is the fact that he met and carefully recorded the anecdotes of so many of the great (and not so great) and good of the not only the show business and theatre world but also politicians, royalty and the business world. Many of these are laugh out loud funny. For those he liked, he avoids sycophancy. There were also those he disliked but generally he refrains from being judgmental about people. As another reviewer has commented, he does dish the dirt although I imagine there was plenty more stories where discretion may have been chosen!

He is also an excellent story teller himself so his accounts of the events of his own personal life also have their measure of interest.

In the end he knows his place in the world and much of the warmth of the book comes from the way he can retreat to family life and the enjoyment of occasions with close friends. There is also honesty, truth and self deprecation which allow us to warm to him as an individual as well.

If the book drags at all, it is the years when he is an MP. I suspect this was because his work prevented him from having the time to get out and enjoy himself as much as he would have liked. Even then, his account of the disintegration of the Major government is fascinating as are some of his comments on the British parliamentary process.

His diaries also record the major historic incidents of the years covered which act as a point of reference to those of us who can remember these times.

A wonderful piece of writing - I have found it hard to put the book down. I will be recommending to all my friends! I hope he gets round to providing us with his diairies of the noughties soon!

Extracts from GB's diaries from 1959 to 1999 (aged 10 to 50), and it is remarkable how little his style changed in all those years. It is almost as though he was born "ready made" with apparently not much need to develop. His considerable intelligence and accomplishments are revealed in a not boastful way, but it his wit which makes his writing particularly enjoyable. His judgements of the many well known people he has met are always interesting if not exactly sensational. Many would probably not recognise the character of the Duke of Edinburgh which emerges. And he reveals a particularly embarrassing indiscretion of Frankie Howerds', but in the end is kinder to him than say Mike Yarwood. Like Oscar Wilde, it seems he will forgive anything except the boring.
Because of all this and also because the entries come in "bite-size" chunks, the book is particularly "moreish". Highly recommended.