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Simon Gray - The Last Cigarette (2nd Hand Hardback)
Synopsis
Simon Gray is determined to give up smoking. Can he kick the habit of sixty years? Will he, sometime soon, be able to leave his house without nervously feeling for his two packets of twenty and his two lighters?
This is the final volume of the trilogy that began with "The Smoking Diaries".
As this wonderful, wayward record of Gray's life progresses, these questions are overtaken by much larger ones. What was sex like before 1963? Will his name be in lights on Broadway? Why leave the bedside of his dying mother?
With their combination of comedy and serious reflection, of sharp observation and painful self-disclosure, Simon Gray's diaries have reinvented the memoir form and are destined to become classics of autobiography.
Details
- Format : Slightly Smaller 2nd Hand Hardback with Dust Jacket
- Condition : As New
- Category : Non-Fiction - Humorous Non-Fiction
- Published : 2008 (Gratna - 1st Edition)
- ISBN : 9781847080387
- SKU : B002949
- PPC : SP600gm
- RRP : £14.99 (Unclipped)
- Quantity Available : 1 only.
External Reviews
" . . . admirers of Simon Gray will not be disappointed by this last volume in his trilogy of ‘smoking diaries’. Many of the topics he treats are now familiar: the delights of swimming, the miseries of air travel, the pains and humiliations of the decaying body, and then, more sombre still, the deaths of close friends or family members. Interspersed with reflections on these matters are vivid memories of his childhood in Canada and his student days in Cambridge . . ." - Literary Review.
"I've just finished this, the third volume of Simon Gray's Smoking Diaries, and it wasn't gloomy at all. I'm a bit surprised by this, as I had let myself infer from the title that it would be a final reckoning of a sort. Thankfully this proves not to be the case - here are the spontaneous musings of one of England's best wordsmiths; at times funny, at times rather self-pitying, but at all times very enjoyable."
"If you like diaries as I do you will love this, a bit unconventional in that there are few dates and times but nevertheless an enthralling read."- Google Reviews.
The Author
Playwright, diarist and novelist Simon Gray was born on Hayling Island on 21st October 1936. He wrote more than 30 stage plays, among them Butley, Otherwise Engaged, Close of Play, The Rear Column, Quartermaine’s Terms, The Common Pursuit, Hidden Laughter, The Late Middle Classes, Japes, The Old Masters (his ninth to be directed by Harold Pinter) and Little Nell.
He also wrote five novels and numerous plays for TV, radio and film, such as After Pilkington and A Month in the Country. In 1990 he was given the BAFTA order xanax online no prescription Writer’s Award. His acclaimed works of non-fiction include The Smoking Diaries trilogy and Coda. Simon Gray was appointed CBE in the 2005 New Year’s Honours for his services to drama and literature. He died on August 7th 2008.