The Richard Burton Diaries

Gossipy, intelligent, well-read, and well-written, Richard Burton's diaries, first published in 2012, are just about everything you could hope for from the form. Burton's artistry was always in danger of being overwhelmed by celebrity and drink, and both intoxicants are fully present in these pages, but so are Burton's intelligence, curiosity, pride, self-deprecation, restlessness, and, most of all, his love for his "adorable difficult fractious intolerant wife," Elizabeth Taylor. The height of their romance, perhaps not by chance, coincides with his diary's richest years.