The Smoking Diaries Volume 1 | Granta

  • Published: 02/04/2008
  • ISBN: 9781847080547
  • 129x20mm
  • 240 pages

The Smoking Diaries Volume 1

Simon Gray

When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day’s events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The Smoking Diaries was the result, in which one of Britain’s most beloved and original writers reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have been as frank about themselves, and even fewer as entertaining.

There's illness but also much hilarity in the diaries of playwright Simon Gray as he struggles with age, amnesia, cigarette addiction and the downsides of a luxury hotel

Blake Morrison, Sunday Times

I never believe people when they say they laugh out loud at books, but there I was with The Smoking Diaries laughing out loud over and over again

Craig Brown

These are superb diaries. If you enjoy company with a tireless and turbulent intelligence these are not to be missed

Howard Jacobson, Evening Standard

The Author

Simon Gray was born in 1936. He began his writing career with Colmain, the first of five novels published by Faber. He is the author of many plays for TV and radio and films, including After Pilkington, which won the Prix Italia, and the Emmy Award-winning Unnatural Pursuits. He wrote more than thirty stage plays, among them Butley and Otherwise Engaged, which both received Evening Standard Awards for Best Play, and The Late Middle Classes, winner of the Barclay’s Best Play Award. His plays Little Nell and Missing Dates were both broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and The Last Cigarette, which he adapted with Hugh Whitemore from The Smoking Diaries, premiered in March 2009. In 1991 he was the BAFTA Writer of the Year. His acclaimed works of non-fiction include An Unnatural Pursuit, How’s That for Telling ‘Em, Fat Lady? and, published by Granta, Fat Chance, Enter a Fox, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer and The Last Cigarette. He was appointed CBE in the 2005 New Year’s Honours for his services to drama and literature. Simon Gray died in August 2008.

More about the author →

From the Same Author

Simon Gray on Granta.com

Fiction | Granta 103

Coda

Simon Gray

Essays & Memoir | Granta 103

God and Me

Simon Gray

‘I'd grown up and become too educated to allow God's breath on my skin.’

Essays & Memoir | Granta 91

Wish You Were Here

Simon Gray

‘From contemptuous wit to unfathomable pain, the centre always held, Alan was always there.’