Diary 1968

  • This material is held at
  • Reference
      GB 217 RWB/1/1/6
  • Dates of Creation
      Jul 1968-Dec 1968
  • Physical Description
      1 file

Scope and Content

Most of the diary is written while Burton is resident in France.

Comprises discussion of the filming in Paris of Staircase with Rex Harrison and Kathleen Nesbitt, narrating a documentary film about Robert F. Kennedy, the shooting of Elizabeth Taylor's film, The Only Game in Town, with Warren Beatty, his relations with Universal Pictures (including their decision not to back a film of The Man From Nowhere) and his invitation to hold a temporary lecturing position at St Peter's Oxford. Also mention of Elizabeth Taylor's hysterectomy and Burton's anxieties concerning her general state of health, Caroline (Elizabeth Taylor's nurse), his suffering from arthritis, Ivor Jenkins's accident and paralysis, the children, life on board the yacht Kalizma at St Jean Cap Ferrat, acquaintance with Maria Callas, socialising with Guy and Marie-Helene Rothschild and with Simon and Sheran Hornby and the funeral of Francis (Elizabeth Taylor's father).

Also reports marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis and Nixon's victory in the US Presidential Election campaign. Discusses his reading: P.G.Wodehouse, Churchill's World Crisis, biographies of Lytton Strachey, Charles de Gaulle and Pierre Laval, and Oswald Mosley's autobiography.

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Bibliography

Chris Williams ed., 'The Richard Burton Diaries' (London: Yale University Press, 2012)