The Richard Burton Diaries (7 page)

Plenty of people have responded to my enquiries for assistance and advice on various aspects of Richard Burton's life and times, or have volunteered valuable information. They include Professor Gino Bedani, David Leslie Davies, Gerwyn Davies, Hubert Davies, Rona Davies, Geoffrey Evans, Keith Evans, Paul Ferris, Mrs Llewella Gibbon, John Julian, Jack Lowe, Dr Gethin Matthews, Glen Parkhouse, Dr Rees Pryce, Dr Robert Shail, Hilary Smith and the cultural commentator Peter Stead.

It has been a very pleasant experience to work with Yale University Press. I am especially thankful to have been dealing with Robert Baldock who has shown such interest and faith in the project from the outset. He has been wonderfully supported by Candida Brazil, Tami Halliday, Katie Harris and Stephen Kent in the London office and by Jennifer Doerr in the United States. Also to the copy-editor Beth Humphries, the proofreader Loulou Brown and Douglas Matthews for the index my many thanks.

Friends have provided invaluable support at so many junctures that it seems entirely inadequate to reduce that to a brief listing. I am, as ever, profoundly indebted to my good friend and former doctoral supervisor, Professor Dai Smith. Others who have helped significantly are Alun Burge, Professor Trevor Herbert of the Open University in Wales, Professor Angela V. John, Professor Gareth Williams of the University of Glamorgan, Siân Williams of the South Wales Miners’ Library and the late Professor Nina Fishman.

If friends contribute, through all kinds of encouraging words and messages of goodwill, then my father Peter Williams's informal press clippings service on Burtonmania has kept me up to date with the latest developments in the media circus, and my mother Josephine Williams's bakestones (Welsh cakes to most of the world) has fuelled many a late night editing session. I also thank my adult sons Philip Watt and the Reverend Harri Williams, who have been through all of this before, and my younger children Samuel Williams (7) and Owen Williams (5), who are now experts at identifying Richard Burton on screen or in audio. My most profound thanks and my deepest love go to my wife Sara Spalding, without whom I would not get to the start line, let alone the finishing tape.

Chris Williams, Pontypridd, July 2012.

My primary thanks go to Sally Burton, whose gift of the diaries to Swansea University made this publication possible and who has taken a very keen and sympathetic interest in the project at every stage of its development. Kate Burton has also been wonderfully supportive, and I am very grateful to her for her enthusiasm and understanding. Other family members whose help has been vital to the work's completion include Graham Jenkins, Hilary Jenkins and Christopher Wilding.

The acquisition of the diaries and of the wider collection of Burton papers by Swansea University would not have been possible without the sustained commitment of Dr Hywel Francis, MP for Aberavon, and of Professor Richard B. Davies, Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University. Key roles have also been played by Professors Noel Thompson, John Spurr, Kevin Williams, M. Wynn Thomas OBE, all of the university's College of Arts and Humanities, and Professor Helen Fulton (now of the University of York). Jasmine Donahaye and Diane Green carried out some critical early work on the diaries, and Dr Louise Miskell and Dr Martin Johnes, friends in the Department of History and Classics, have said and done the right things at the right times to keep the whole show on the road. I am also very grateful to Dr Elaine Canning, Helen Baldwin and Sara Robb of the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities with whom I have worked closely in the final stages.

It is difficult to overstate the vital part that has been played and will continue to be played in the entire Richard Burton enterprise at Swansea by colleagues in the university's library and archives. Chris West and Kevin Daniels have provided encouragement and backing from the top. Elisabeth Bennett, the university archivist, has been deeply involved in all things Burton from the very beginning and continues to provide crucial advice and support at every juncture, ably supported by Sue Thomas. Dr Katrina Legg undertook the transcription of the diaries and carried it out with a painstaking professionalism that I suspect I could not, even with unlimited time, have matched. Her labours represent the solid foundation on which so much else rests. I also thank Lee Fisher and Emyr Lewis of the university's solicitors Morgan Cole for their legal expertise, Gordon Andrews and Emma Wilcox of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, Bethan Jones and Judith Winnan of BBC Cymru Wales, and Catrin Brace of the Department of the First Minister of the Welsh Government in New York.

Plenty of people have responded to my enquiries for assistance and advice on various aspects of Richard Burton's life and times, or have volunteered valuable information. They include Professor Gino Bedani, David Leslie Davies, Gerwyn Davies, Hubert Davies, Rona Davies, Geoffrey Evans, Keith Evans, Paul Ferris, Mrs Llewella Gibbon, John Julian, Jack Lowe, Dr Gethin Matthews, Glen Parkhouse, Dr Rees Pryce, Dr Robert Shail, Hilary Smith and the cultural commentator Peter Stead.

It has been a very pleasant experience to work with Yale University Press. I am especially thankful to have been dealing with Robert Baldock who has shown such interest and faith in the project from the outset. He has been wonderfully supported by Candida Brazil, Tami Halliday, Katie Harris and Stephen Kent in the London office and by Jennifer Doerr in the United States. Also to the copy-editor Beth Humphries, the proofreader Loulou Brown and Douglas Matthews for the index my many thanks.

Friends have provided invaluable support at so many junctures that it seems entirely inadequate to reduce that to a brief listing. I am, as ever, profoundly indebted to my good friend and former doctoral supervisor, Professor Dai Smith. Others who have helped significantly are Alun Burge, Professor Trevor Herbert of the Open University in Wales, Professor Angela V. John, Professor Gareth Williams of the University of Glamorgan, Siân Williams of the South Wales Miners’ Library and the late Professor Nina Fishman.

If friends contribute, through all kinds of encouraging words and messages of goodwill, then my father Peter Williams's informal press clippings service on Burtonmania has kept me up to date with the latest developments in the media circus, and my mother Josephine Williams's bakestones (Welsh cakes to most of the world) has fuelled many a late night editing session. I also thank my adult sons Philip Watt and the Reverend Harri Williams, who have been through all of this before, and my younger children Samuel Williams (7) and Owen Williams (5), who are now experts at identifying Richard Burton on screen or in audio. My most profound thanks and my deepest love go to my wife Sara Spalding, without whom I would not get to the start line, let alone the finishing tape.

Chris Williams, Pontypridd, July 2012.

The version of the diaries that has been prepared here for print is shorter than the full version (which will be made available online). While the introduction, linking passages, bibliography and the vast majority of the footnotes are all identical, the total volume of the text (of Burton's own words, very largely, although this also includes a small number of footnotes) has been reduced by one-quarter. In a very few cases this has meant the excision of the entire entry for a day. Mostly, however, it has involved the removal of less interesting, repetitious or apparently inconsequential material. Such editorial excisions are indicated by the sign [...] and should not be confused with Burton's occasional practice of entering – ... – an ellipsis. All material removed from the print version will be found in the online version, with the exception of elements of a dozen entries that include material of a sensitive nature in respect of family members still living. Occasionally it has also been necessary to reorder or reorganize footnotes in order for the presentation of material to be consistent with the print version.

The version of the diaries that has been prepared here for print is shorter than the full version (which will be made available online). While the introduction, linking passages, bibliography and the vast majority of the footnotes are all identical, the total volume of the text (of Burton's own words, very largely, although this also includes a small number of footnotes) has been reduced by one-quarter. In a very few cases this has meant the excision of the entire entry for a day. Mostly, however, it has involved the removal of less interesting, repetitious or apparently inconsequential material. Such editorial excisions are indicated by the sign [...] and should not be confused with Burton's occasional practice of entering – ... – an ellipsis. All material removed from the print version will be found in the online version, with the exception of elements of a dozen entries that include material of a sensitive nature in respect of family members still living. Occasionally it has also been necessary to reorder or reorganize footnotes in order for the presentation of material to be consistent with the print version.

This introduction to Richard Burton's diaries performs a number of functions. First, it offers a sketch of the life of Richard Jenkins, later Richard Burton, from his birth in 1925 through to the beginning of what may be called the ‘diary years’, in 1965. During these first four decades Burton did keep two diaries which are reproduced in this volume: one in 1939/40, when he was still Richard Jenkins, and one in 1960, when he was married to his first wife, Sybil. Both are interesting, but neither offers anything in the way of a continuous narrative which might replace a broader overview of the subject's life in these years.

Once we arrive at the beginning of 1965, however, the diaries are sufficiently substantial and sequential to render any biographical sketching redundant. Linking passages, situated chronologically amidst the text itself, perform the vital function of connecting those parts of the diaries kept between January 1965 and March 1972 with each other.

After March 1972 the diaries are more fragmented. Further passages, also situated in the text, contextualize the primary materials for 1975, 1977, 1980 and 1983, and the last months of Richard Burton's life.

The second section of this introduction addresses the question of the provenance and purpose of the diaries. Why did Burton keep them? Who was their intended audience? To what extent can one explain the lapses in making entries, or even the many months and years that separate some of the diaries that have survived?

The third section extends this analysis by considering the value of the diaries, particularly when set against the context of the many biographies of Burton and of Elizabeth Taylor that purport to tell the story of the same period of time. To what extent, one has to enquire, do they represent a corrective to previously published accounts? Is it possible to see the diaries as harbouring a greater ‘truth’ than the many interviews given by Burton, or are they exercises in self-deception, no more reliable than any other source?

Finally, the principles by which these diaries have been edited and prepared for publication will be explained.

Richard Burton: A Biographical Sketch, 1925–1965

Richard Walter Jenkins was born on 10 November 1925 at the family home, 2, Dan-y-bont, Pontrhydyfen in the Afan valley, Glamorgan, Wales. His father, also named Richard Walter Jenkins and born in the same place in 1876, was a collier. His mother, born Edith Maud Thomas in 1883, had been a barmaid, and was originally from Llangyfelach north of Swansea, six miles to the west. Richard Sr and Edith had married in 1900. Their eldest child, Thomas Henry, had been born in 1901, and by 1925 there were four more sons – Ivor (born 1906), William (born 1911), David (born 1914) and Verdun (born 1916) – and four daughters: Cecilia (born 1905), Hilda (born 1918), Catherine (born 1921) and Edith (born 1922). Two other daughters, both named Margaret Hannah, had died in infancy (in 1903 and 1908, respectively). So Richard junior was the twelfth child and the sixth son of a prolific union, even by the standards of coal miners’ families in the early twentieth century.
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Pontrhydyfen was a mining village. The coal industry was the primary employer, although a greater diversity of industrial jobs existed a few miles to the south at Cwmafan and Port Talbot. At its immediate pre-war peak there had been a large pit in Pontrhydyfen and an associated drift mine together named the Cynon colliery, employing around 700 men, as well as the Merthyr Llantwit and the Argoed collieries, both of which employed around a hundred men each. Smaller concerns employing about twenty men operated at Graig Lyn and Wern Afon. There were other collieries within relatively easy travelling distance to the north, around Cymmer, and to the south, at Cwmafan.

The steep valley sides were, and remain, the dominant landscape motif and give the area an Alpine feel. The dramatic atmosphere is enhanced by two large viaducts: a seven-arch railway viaduct of red brick, and, looming above the Jenkins family home, what had originally been the Bont Fawr aqueduct, powering waterwheels at the long-closed Oakwood ironworks. This four-spanned structure in Pennant sandstone by 1925 carried a minor road.