The Diaries (Diaries, Letters and Essays) Book

In cinema and in theatre, Lindsay Anderson was one of the most innovative, independent, and influential directors of the twentieth century. With classic films like This Sporting Life, If...., and O Lucky Man!, he established an electrifying new wave in British cinema, while in the theatre he first staged such groundbreaking plays as Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, Home, and What The Butler Saw. His Diaries are at once the intimate record of a remarkable man fiercely opposed to the political and cultural establishment of his time; a candid account of his personal and public struggles, his visionary work, and troubled relationships; and an indispensable history of the artistic revolution he helped to shape.

"He was a brilliant writer, with great observational and analytic gifts, a charismatic figure who commanded the attention of a generation of serious cinephiles, a person of warmth, charm, and integrity who attracted a loyal band of actors and other associates."
—Philip French, Observer

"A man of vivid contradictions ... He loved what he hated and hated what he loved in a seamless circle of retributory affections. He was a large, expansive, celebratory–liberating spirit."—David Storey

"He was a conscience for us all."—Karel Reisz

"Vicious and velvety in equal measure ... it demands reading at a single sitting."
—Daily Telegraph

Paul Sutton is an historian and freelance photographer.