Munkey Diaries 1957 1982

Tom Stoppard

The key book for all time on Tom Stoppard: the biography of our greatest living playwright, by one of the leading literary biographers in the English-speaking world, a star in her own right, Hermione Lee. With unprecedented access to private papers, diaries, letters, and countless interviews with figures ranging from Felicity Kendal to John Boorman and Trevor Nunn to Steven Spielberg, Hermione Lee builds a metiucously researched portrait of one of our greatest playwrights. Drawing on several years of long, exploratory conversations with Stoppard himself, it tracks his Czech origins and childhood in India to every school and home he's ever lived in, every piece of writing he's ever done, and every play and film he's ever worked on; but in the end this is the story of a complex, elusive and private man, which tells you an enormous amount about him but leaves you, also, with the fascinating mystery of his ultimate unknowability.

Munkey Diaries

Jane Birkin - actor, singer, songwriter and model - attained international fame with her decade-long musical and personal relationship with Serge Gainsbourg, which featured their internationally controversial hit song 'Je t'aime...moi no plus'. She has also enjoyed a notable career as an actress in British and French cinema, including Blow-Up, Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun. And then there is the Birkin bag... Throughout these years Jane has been keeping a diary:"I've been keeping a journal since I was eleven, writing it to my confidante, the stuffed monkey won in a tombola: Munkey. He has slept by my side, shared my life with John, Serge, Jacques, and been witness to every joy and sadness. Before my children arrived wreaking havoc on my life, I left Munkey in Serge's arms, in the casket where he lay, like a pharaoh. My monkey, protecting him in the after-life.As I re-read my journals, it seems obvious to me that we don't change. What I was twelve years old, I am today. Newspapers are obviously unfair, giving different versions of everything, but here, there is only my version. On principle, I haven't changed anything, and believe me, looking back, I would have preferred to have wiser reactions than I did . . ."We thought we knew nearly everything about Jane Birkin. Her book not only re-creates the flamboyant era of Swinging London and Saint-Germain-des-Pres in the 1970s, it also lets us into the everyday life of an exceptional woman.

Munkey Diaries