0:00:02 > 0:00:05He was the most charismatic actor of the last century.
0:00:05 > 0:00:08The boy from South Wales conquered the London stage,
0:00:08 > 0:00:10scaled the heights of Hollywood
0:00:10 > 0:00:13and married the world's most beautiful woman.
0:00:13 > 0:00:17Now, private diaries he wrote at the peak of his fame
0:00:17 > 0:00:20reveal Richard Burton in his own words.
0:00:20 > 0:00:25His personality comes through just exactly as I knew it.
0:00:25 > 0:00:31He's dangerous, explosive, quite often uncontrolled.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35The diaries explode all over the globe, just as Richard did.
0:00:35 > 0:00:38- They- are- Rich.
0:00:55 > 0:01:00He was the miner's son who made his name playing kings and princes.
0:01:00 > 0:01:03The Richard Burton Diaries, now published in their entirety
0:01:03 > 0:01:07for the first time, take us on an epic journey,
0:01:07 > 0:01:11from the village of Pontrhydyfen to worldwide notoriety
0:01:11 > 0:01:13and superstardom.
0:01:13 > 0:01:15They're an intimate portrait of how far Burton moved
0:01:15 > 0:01:19from his Welsh past - and how he never abandoned it, at all.
0:01:19 > 0:01:21Bravo!
0:01:21 > 0:01:24I really don't know what to say about my race. I'm so proud of them
0:01:24 > 0:01:30and I love the Welsh with a passion that's almost idolatrous,
0:01:30 > 0:01:33but particularly the South Welsh, the people I know the best,
0:01:33 > 0:01:34and particularly the mining class.
0:01:34 > 0:01:37But Burton transcends boundaries.
0:01:37 > 0:01:41The diaries give us unrivalled access to the many worlds
0:01:41 > 0:01:44he moved in, and to the man behind the myth.
0:01:44 > 0:01:49His public romance with Elizabeth Taylor comes into sharp focus,
0:01:49 > 0:01:52but so does his private passion - not acting, but literature
0:01:52 > 0:01:54and the life of the mind.
0:01:54 > 0:01:59Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer
0:01:59 > 0:02:03by this son of York and all the clouds that lour'd about our house
0:02:03 > 0:02:06in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
0:02:06 > 0:02:10He didn't rate acting very highly. He loved writers.
0:02:10 > 0:02:14He liked to read and he himself wanted to write,
0:02:14 > 0:02:17and he's done it in his diaries. His diaries are his real legacy.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22The diary originals are held at the Richard Burton Archive
0:02:22 > 0:02:26in Swansea University, donated by Burton's widow, Sally.
0:02:26 > 0:02:28They're not a continuous record.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32The bulk of the diaries cover the years 1965 to 1972,
0:02:32 > 0:02:36when Richard is married to Elizabeth and relatively settled.
0:02:36 > 0:02:39The diaries show us that this was a genuine marriage.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42There was real love between the two of them.
0:02:42 > 0:02:46Richard certainly pours out his love, his admiration for Elizabeth
0:02:46 > 0:02:49on the pages. Yes, there are frustrations.
0:02:49 > 0:02:55There are considerable rows, tantrums, rifts and tensions
0:02:55 > 0:02:57that build within the relationship, but nevertheless
0:02:57 > 0:03:01that urge that he has to bed Elizabeth comes through
0:03:01 > 0:03:02fairly regularly.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06Burton's sense of excitement
0:03:06 > 0:03:10and sheer erotic rapture shines out in the writing.
0:03:10 > 0:03:13'I have been inordinately lucky all my life,
0:03:13 > 0:03:16'but the greatest luck of all has been Elizabeth.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19'She has turned me into a moral man, but not a prig,
0:03:19 > 0:03:22'she is a wildly exciting lover-mistress,
0:03:22 > 0:03:23'she is shy and witty,
0:03:23 > 0:03:27'she is nobody's fool, she is a brilliant actress,
0:03:27 > 0:03:31'she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography.'
0:03:35 > 0:03:39Their real-life affair fuelled an on-screen chemistry
0:03:39 > 0:03:41that made their performances electric.
0:03:46 > 0:03:50That I will...never be free of you.
0:03:52 > 0:03:55'She was some sort of Cleopatra figure.
0:03:55 > 0:03:56'He'd never met anybody like her.'
0:03:56 > 0:03:59More than anything else, she was exotic.
0:03:59 > 0:04:02So I think she enraptured him, really.
0:04:02 > 0:04:04He was passionate about her
0:04:04 > 0:04:06and, sexually, they were a match plainly.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10Plainly.
0:04:10 > 0:04:12Because although I don't think all the time,
0:04:12 > 0:04:17but I think for a lot of the time he was totally faithful to Elizabeth,
0:04:17 > 0:04:19because I think he was satisfied.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25He plainly hadn't been faithful to his first wife Sybil,
0:04:25 > 0:04:27with whom he had two daughters.
0:04:27 > 0:04:30Before Taylor, there were numerous other sexual conquests,
0:04:30 > 0:04:34including a long affair with the actress Claire Bloom.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38The loyalty on Sybil's part was unmatchable.
0:04:39 > 0:04:42He was a bad, bad boy, sexually!
0:04:43 > 0:04:48I used to think there was a great deal of guilt in him about Sybil,
0:04:48 > 0:04:51but I'm not sure that there was.
0:04:51 > 0:04:58Reading the diaries, he's sometimes quite cool about Sybil...
0:04:58 > 0:04:59and quite hard about her.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02She adored him.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06And that he then loved another more than he loved her...
0:05:08 > 0:05:11..was... That destroyed her.
0:05:11 > 0:05:15He became so obsessed with Elizabeth,
0:05:15 > 0:05:19once he confessed to her that he loved her and wanted her,
0:05:19 > 0:05:23she then applied the rules - and the handcuffs.
0:05:23 > 0:05:28Richard was already living as a tax exile in Switzerland.
0:05:28 > 0:05:32But the Burton-Taylor partnership took extravagance to new heights.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35They had a luxurious yacht, the Kalizma,
0:05:35 > 0:05:37and homes in Europe, Mexico and California.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41He bought her a private jet, called Elizabeth.
0:05:43 > 0:05:47The new Mrs Burton also had a certain weakness for jewels.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51In the '60s, they were bigger than the Beatles.
0:05:51 > 0:05:53They were part of the '60s liberation.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57There was the Beatles, but there was Richard and Elizabeth,
0:05:57 > 0:06:00doing what the hell they wanted. He really didn't give a damn.
0:06:00 > 0:06:05And he was mad as a bat, which is deeply attractive, and a show-off.
0:06:05 > 0:06:08I mean, fancy bidding for the most expensive diamond in the world
0:06:08 > 0:06:11from a telephone box in a pub. But he did, and he knew that
0:06:11 > 0:06:14Elizabeth was in the bar in the next room like that, "Did he get it?
0:06:14 > 0:06:16"Is he going to beat the Maharaja?"
0:06:16 > 0:06:19Well, of course he was going to beat the Maharaja!
0:06:19 > 0:06:22Cos he just wanted to do it.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27Some of those things that he pursued were innate in his nature
0:06:27 > 0:06:33to begin with. He wanted out from his background,
0:06:33 > 0:06:35although he loved his background.
0:06:35 > 0:06:41He wanted power, he wanted riches, undoubtedly.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44It fulfilled part of his dream.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50After all, the fundamental basis of being an actor
0:06:50 > 0:06:54is simply to make money.
0:06:55 > 0:06:57I rather like being famous.
0:06:58 > 0:07:02I rather like being given the best seat on the plane,
0:07:02 > 0:07:04the best seat in a restaurant.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08Aristotle Onassis, Princess Grace of Monaco,
0:07:08 > 0:07:12the Kennedy family pop up in the diaries,
0:07:12 > 0:07:14the Rothschilds.
0:07:14 > 0:07:18So there is a sense in which Richard is enjoying
0:07:18 > 0:07:22being part of that world. He was aware this was a very unusual place
0:07:22 > 0:07:26for a miner's son from Pontrhydyfen to be,
0:07:26 > 0:07:28and perhaps he had a sense that it wouldn't
0:07:28 > 0:07:30necessarily last forever.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33The awareness that he was lucky and could have been living
0:07:33 > 0:07:36a very different life is threaded through the diaries.
0:07:36 > 0:07:39His generosity towards his family was perhaps
0:07:39 > 0:07:41a recognition of the tightrope he'd walked.
0:07:41 > 0:07:47It's not my profits. I give it away. Give it to my family.
0:07:48 > 0:07:54Or I buy enormous presents for Elizabeth Taylor. Or did.
0:07:54 > 0:07:59The fact that I was able to take care of a certain amount of people
0:07:59 > 0:08:02has given me some pleasure.
0:08:02 > 0:08:05The fact that I had the power to do it.
0:08:05 > 0:08:09From his first amount of money that he made on The Robe,
0:08:09 > 0:08:14which was his first big major Hollywood film, he came home
0:08:14 > 0:08:18and then bought every one of his brothers and sisters a house,
0:08:18 > 0:08:22to make sure none of them needed to rent or to have a mortgage.
0:08:22 > 0:08:25And of course he looked after them all through their lives.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29I mean, Mam used to say, "The cheque will be coming now in August."
0:08:29 > 0:08:32One would come in August and one at Christmas time.
0:08:32 > 0:08:36Generous of spirit, generous with his money.
0:08:36 > 0:08:39Money didn't mean that much to him. He had it, so he spent it.
0:08:39 > 0:08:43His success was responsible for elevating our family
0:08:43 > 0:08:47out of the working class, into the middle class,
0:08:47 > 0:08:51and giving us a much better chance in life.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55Burton himself was now in the international superstar class.
0:08:55 > 0:09:00He enjoyed the high life, but was keen to share it, too.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04It was his joy to invite the whole family up to The Dorchester,
0:09:04 > 0:09:08you know, and to places that they'd never been before,
0:09:08 > 0:09:12to go to Elizabeth's 40th birthday party in Budapest.
0:09:12 > 0:09:15I mean, how fantastic was that, you know?
0:09:15 > 0:09:17And sitting down at a table with Princess Grace.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20I mean, what dreams are made of.
0:09:20 > 0:09:23Burton and Taylor were a business partnership,
0:09:23 > 0:09:27choosing scripts that exploited their fame as a couple.
0:09:27 > 0:09:30Some of the films they made together were run-of-the-mill.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33Others, like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
0:09:33 > 0:09:37were huge critical and artistic successes.
0:09:37 > 0:09:41I think he gave her that film. He subsumed his own part,
0:09:41 > 0:09:42because she didn't want to do it.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44It wasn't her, it wasn't in her range.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47She knew that, she told him that. It's the diaries.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49But he teased her into it.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52He said, "Somebody's going to do it and they'll get an Oscar, Elizabeth.
0:09:52 > 0:09:56"And it's not going to be you, if you don't do it."
0:09:56 > 0:09:58You can sit around with the gin running out of your mouth,
0:09:58 > 0:10:00you can humiliate me, you can tear me to pieces all night,
0:10:00 > 0:10:03- that's perfectly OK, that's all right.- You can stand it.
0:10:03 > 0:10:04I cannot stand it!
0:10:04 > 0:10:07You can stand it, you married me for it!
0:10:10 > 0:10:14- That's a desperately sick lie. - Don't you know it even yet.
0:10:16 > 0:10:17He was always hitting her.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20She starts a sentence and he comes in
0:10:20 > 0:10:23and he makes her go like that, makes her angry, really angry,
0:10:23 > 0:10:28not an actress angry. She's pissed off with him getting in her way.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33But he makes her really good, and that got her the Oscar.
0:10:33 > 0:10:36In that scene where she hits him, she really hits him,
0:10:36 > 0:10:38- completely unprofessionally. - No, no, you're sick.
0:10:39 > 0:10:44I'll show you who's sick. I'll show you who's sick! I'll show you!
0:10:44 > 0:10:49- All right!- I'll show you! I'll show you!- Stop it. Stop it!
0:10:51 > 0:10:54SHE LAUGHS
0:10:54 > 0:10:57Oh, boy.
0:10:57 > 0:11:01You really are having a field day, aren't you?
0:11:01 > 0:11:05In return, Burton acknowledged his debt to Taylor.
0:11:05 > 0:11:07She knows a great deal about film acting and she persuaded me
0:11:07 > 0:11:10that I mustn't pretend that film acting is just a means
0:11:10 > 0:11:13of filling in time between stage performances
0:11:13 > 0:11:17and, indeed, made me work at it, which I'd never done.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21He called in to say that the new calf came into the world this morning,
0:11:21 > 0:11:23and next year they're building a new chimney.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27'When he started his early films, he was stagey.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30'And it wasn't really until he was with Elizabeth, I think,
0:11:30 > 0:11:37that she said to him, "Don't just do it all the time, just think it.
0:11:37 > 0:11:42"Just feel it. Don't forget that in close-up you're over 40-foot high,"
0:11:42 > 0:11:44'and he learnt to do that.'
0:11:44 > 0:11:52Not always, because the fury and the power would burst out of him
0:11:52 > 0:11:55sometimes, as it bursts out in the diaries,
0:11:55 > 0:12:00and spoil what was building into a marvellously subtle performance.
0:12:00 > 0:12:05The Hollywood publicity machine made the most of the Burton-Taylor brand,
0:12:05 > 0:12:08encouraging audiences to believe that, by watching the movies,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11they were also peering into the marriage.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14Some parallels aren't lost on their closest friends.
0:12:14 > 0:12:18I saw them at their best together when they were
0:12:18 > 0:12:20making Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
0:12:20 > 0:12:22and Rich flew me out.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27And I had a wonderful time with them watching the filming
0:12:27 > 0:12:31during the day and coming home at night, when all their rancour...
0:12:32 > 0:12:37..was expended in the filming. So they were sweetness and light.
0:12:37 > 0:12:43But I did, on other occasions, see pretty tempestuous bickering,
0:12:43 > 0:12:45which I hated.
0:12:45 > 0:12:48When she was firing on all cylinders, I thought it vulgar.
0:12:51 > 0:12:53Rough.
0:12:53 > 0:12:56Burton, though, could give as good as he got.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00His own melancholy and anger, which directors had used
0:13:00 > 0:13:03to draw out some of his best screen performances,
0:13:03 > 0:13:05were never far from the surface.
0:13:05 > 0:13:10Even in the 1950s, one critic had noticed a curdled quality in him.
0:13:10 > 0:13:14It's there in the remorseful and self-lacerating tone
0:13:14 > 0:13:15in parts of the diaries.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20'Yesterday was another terrible day.
0:13:20 > 0:13:22'Insulting Elizabeth, drunk,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25'periodically excusing myself, rather shabbily,
0:13:25 > 0:13:27'and then starting the rough treatment all over again.
0:13:27 > 0:13:30'Sometimes, I am so much my father's son
0:13:30 > 0:13:33'that I give myself the occasional creeps.
0:13:33 > 0:13:36'He had the same gift for damaging with the tongue.
0:13:36 > 0:13:39'He had the same temporary violence.'
0:13:41 > 0:13:44The writing is shot through with Burton's insight
0:13:44 > 0:13:47and self-knowledge about his darker side.
0:13:47 > 0:13:50He wasn't a nasty man, but he got drunk a lot.
0:13:50 > 0:13:52He did have a turn on him.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56When he got angry, he would say something and it would be vitriolic
0:13:56 > 0:14:00and it would be incisive, and it would just cut your legs off.
0:14:00 > 0:14:04Richard's mood wasn't helped by Elizabeth's large entourage,
0:14:04 > 0:14:08a constant presence in their marriage.
0:14:08 > 0:14:10It just became an even bigger struggle for him
0:14:10 > 0:14:13to hang on to the centre of who he was.
0:14:13 > 0:14:16And... Because Elizabeth wasn't real.
0:14:18 > 0:14:22I mean, to me, to this day, she's not real, she's an icon,
0:14:22 > 0:14:28a Hollywood mega-superstar, and Richard somehow married into that.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31I walk past pictures of Elizabeth Taylor remembering,
0:14:31 > 0:14:33"There was one time in my life that she was my auntie."
0:14:33 > 0:14:36I'm going, "That's madness," you know?
0:14:36 > 0:14:41I think my life was changed by a woman who's called Elizabeth Taylor.
0:14:41 > 0:14:46I'm not entirely sure what exactly she did to me.
0:14:48 > 0:14:50But certainly...
0:14:54 > 0:14:58I think she was bad for him, in the sum of things.
0:14:58 > 0:15:02I think, in a way, she destroyed him.
0:15:02 > 0:15:07Mind you, I think he probably would have gone on to destroy himself,
0:15:07 > 0:15:10without Elizabeth's influence...
0:15:12 > 0:15:14..alas.
0:15:14 > 0:15:19To the end, Richard himself was always generous about Elizabeth.
0:15:19 > 0:15:26I suppose, 13 years of such intensity with two people living together
0:15:26 > 0:15:29who adored each other as much as we did,
0:15:29 > 0:15:34it's at such a continual seething,
0:15:34 > 0:15:37boiling point, that eventually it spills over.
0:15:37 > 0:15:43But there is no rancour, no animosity, on either side.
0:15:43 > 0:15:47By the early '70s, younger actors had supplanted Burton and Taylor
0:15:47 > 0:15:50as Hollywood's biggest stars.
0:15:50 > 0:15:54In 1972 came the death of Ivor, Richard's beloved older brother.
0:15:54 > 0:15:57Ivor, a former coal miner, had broken his neck in a fall
0:15:57 > 0:16:01at Burton's home in Switzerland and become a quadriplegic.
0:16:01 > 0:16:07Ivor was his hero, the guy he looked up to, his second father if you like.
0:16:07 > 0:16:13If you couple the grief of Ivor's accident,
0:16:13 > 0:16:20which he felt responsible for, with his natural melancholia,
0:16:20 > 0:16:25then you've got a recipe for disaster.
0:16:25 > 0:16:28And it happened at a time when he was drinking.
0:16:28 > 0:16:31I think it really hit him hard.
0:16:31 > 0:16:371973 and 1974 were among the darkest times and Burton's life.
0:16:37 > 0:16:40He and Taylor separated, then divorced.
0:16:40 > 0:16:42His drinking was out of control.
0:16:42 > 0:16:47There was a second or two, perhaps about a year ago,
0:16:47 > 0:16:51when I didn't fancy much staying alive.
0:16:51 > 0:16:57You can, of course, drink yourself to death.
0:16:57 > 0:16:59And that's rather pleasant.
0:16:59 > 0:17:02LAUGHTER
0:17:02 > 0:17:06It's better than falling on a sword. That's for sure.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09- Yeah, well.- Is that what you tried to do, to drink yourself to death?
0:17:09 > 0:17:11- I had a go, yes.- Did you?- Yes.
0:17:11 > 0:17:17I was up to about two-and-a-half to three bottles of hard liquor a day.
0:17:17 > 0:17:22The diary peters out in 1972 and doesn't resume until 1975,
0:17:22 > 0:17:26the year of Burton's short-lived second marriage to Taylor.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30Richard tended to keep his diary when he was relatively happy.
0:17:30 > 0:17:36When he goes into this dramatic downward spiral in 1972-73,
0:17:36 > 0:17:38he's not comfortable with who he is.
0:17:38 > 0:17:43My sense is that he could not bear to keep a diary during that period.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45He couldn't come to terms
0:17:45 > 0:17:48with writing about his life as it began to disintegrate.
0:17:48 > 0:17:51Just how disillusioned he'd become
0:17:51 > 0:17:53is painfully apparent in an interview he gave
0:17:53 > 0:17:58the movie critic Barry Norman, while filming in Milan in 1974.
0:17:58 > 0:18:03I'm afraid I'm an actor. I don't want to be an actor,
0:18:03 > 0:18:05but, however, I am.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11'I think I'm reasonably intelligent,
0:18:11 > 0:18:15'clever, good, kind.'
0:18:15 > 0:18:16Sweet.
0:18:18 > 0:18:19Husty.
0:18:23 > 0:18:28- Gifted?- Oh, no. I'm not gifted.
0:18:30 > 0:18:34- May I have a cigarette? - By all means, yes.
0:18:34 > 0:18:38Do you enjoy this superstar status, the tremendous celebrity,
0:18:38 > 0:18:42the fact that you can't move without being mobbed?
0:18:42 > 0:18:45Do you really enjoy it, that kind of life?
0:18:45 > 0:18:48If it stops, I'm dead.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52Time and again in the diaries, he's scathing about the film business
0:18:52 > 0:18:57and disdainful of his own profession.
0:18:57 > 0:19:01'Acting on stage or films,
0:19:01 > 0:19:03'apart from one or two high moments of nervous excitement,
0:19:03 > 0:19:05'is sheer drudgery.
0:19:05 > 0:19:09'If I retired from acting professionally tomorrow I would never
0:19:09 > 0:19:14'appear in the local amateur dramatic society for the sheer love of it.'
0:19:14 > 0:19:16This was a revelation to me,
0:19:16 > 0:19:20the degree to which he loathed and despised acting.
0:19:20 > 0:19:22I hate the tears in the eyes!
0:19:22 > 0:19:25"Oh, how I hate it. Oh, how boring it is.
0:19:25 > 0:19:28"I loathe it, being an actor is death!"
0:19:28 > 0:19:31He was accused of wasting his talent
0:19:31 > 0:19:34on a string of lucrative, but mediocre, films.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37But what really got under his skin was the idea that the stage
0:19:37 > 0:19:39was superior to movies or TV,
0:19:39 > 0:19:44and that he'd squandered his destiny as a great classical actor.
0:19:44 > 0:19:49The theatrical establishment said, "Oh, he's gone into films,
0:19:49 > 0:19:50"he's betrayed his great talent."
0:19:50 > 0:19:54He always thought that was nonsense. He thought that acting was acting.
0:19:56 > 0:20:00'After, shall we say, ten weeks of playing Hamlet on the stage,
0:20:00 > 0:20:03'one's soul staggers with tedium
0:20:03 > 0:20:07'and one's mind rejects the series of quotations that Hamlet now is.
0:20:07 > 0:20:11'Has there ever been a more boring speech, after 400 years
0:20:11 > 0:20:15'of constant repetition, than, "To be, or not to be?"'
0:20:18 > 0:20:23The Burton of the diaries is a man yearning to live other lives.
0:20:23 > 0:20:27If I hadn't fallen for the lure of tinsel and paint and so on,
0:20:27 > 0:20:31I might have made a very nippy wing forward for Wales.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34I would rather have played for Wales than play Hamlet.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37"He wasn't devoted to making great art,"
0:20:37 > 0:20:39a fellow actor said of him.
0:20:39 > 0:20:43"He was concerned that the odyssey that was Richard Burton."
0:20:43 > 0:20:48That odyssey had brought him as a young man to Oxford University,
0:20:48 > 0:20:52on a short course as an RAF cadet studying English literature.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56He was enchanted and, in 1966, he returned with Elizabeth
0:20:56 > 0:21:00to star in a student production of Doctor Faustus.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03"The only play," he said, "I don't have to work on.
0:21:03 > 0:21:06"I AM Faustus."
0:21:06 > 0:21:11Time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come
0:21:11 > 0:21:16and Faustus must be damned!
0:21:16 > 0:21:20Critics thought they'd found the perfect metaphor to beat him with.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24The over-reacher who'd squandered his gifts
0:21:24 > 0:21:25and sold his soul to the devil.
0:21:25 > 0:21:28You must, at some time, Richard Burton,
0:21:28 > 0:21:31faced the question of whether you should have
0:21:31 > 0:21:35continued as an imposing and, even, in the view of many people,
0:21:35 > 0:21:39great stage actor or moved into the world of films,
0:21:39 > 0:21:41which is more commercially rewarding,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44but perhaps not so rewarding, artistically.
0:21:44 > 0:21:47Do you ever regret having moved into the commercial cinema?
0:21:47 > 0:21:51Oh, excuse me, Richard, that makes me so angry!
0:21:51 > 0:21:53Because he has not left the stage.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56- That's absolute bloody rubbish. - Elizabeth, pull yourself together.
0:21:56 > 0:21:58Last year, he just did a thing here for Oxford
0:21:58 > 0:21:59on the stage.
0:21:59 > 0:22:03You said the exact phrase that I knew you were working up to.
0:22:03 > 0:22:06"Sold out." And it offends me to my soul.
0:22:06 > 0:22:10If Burton is offended, he doesn't show it.
0:22:10 > 0:22:15Already, barely into his 40s, he's thinking of leaving acting behind
0:22:15 > 0:22:18and striking out in a new direction.
0:22:18 > 0:22:20I will have to make a choice.
0:22:20 > 0:22:22That is whether to continue acting
0:22:22 > 0:22:26or whether to not act and do something else that I have in mind,
0:22:26 > 0:22:28which I'd rather not reveal, but...
0:22:28 > 0:22:32Erm... Simply, it seems to me, to continue acting
0:22:32 > 0:22:35until you are 70 years old, learning other people's words
0:22:35 > 0:22:38and trotting them out all the time is faintly undignified.
0:22:38 > 0:22:44That new direction shines through like a golden thread in the diaries.
0:22:44 > 0:22:47It's a career as a writer and, perhaps, an academic.
0:22:47 > 0:22:49Besides Elizabeth,
0:22:49 > 0:22:53the great passion in his life was the English language.
0:22:53 > 0:22:55The library at his home near Geneva
0:22:55 > 0:22:59was a monument to his lifelong love affair with books.
0:22:59 > 0:23:02When I was with him in Le Pays de Galles in Celigny,
0:23:02 > 0:23:05where he had his house, he used to get up at 5.00am and read.
0:23:05 > 0:23:10I would then go and join him up in the library.
0:23:10 > 0:23:15Then he'd quote from something. "What do you think of this?"
0:23:15 > 0:23:16Then he'd go,
0:23:16 > 0:23:19"To begin at the beginning,"
0:23:19 > 0:23:22and he'd recite from Dylan Thomas.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24We were sitting in the Dorchester one night
0:23:24 > 0:23:27and he had the complete works of Shakespeare there.
0:23:27 > 0:23:29He said to me, "Sian, open it at any page
0:23:29 > 0:23:32"and just give me the first line."
0:23:32 > 0:23:35We spent the whole evening, I was fascinated with this.
0:23:35 > 0:23:40I'd read the first line and he would continue. Page after page of it.
0:23:40 > 0:23:42Tremendous memory.
0:23:42 > 0:23:45The compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
0:23:45 > 0:23:49was the best birthday present Elizabeth ever gave him,
0:23:49 > 0:23:51Burton writes in the diaries.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54He's always learning new languages,
0:23:54 > 0:23:59practising his grammar or updating his vocabulary.
0:23:59 > 0:24:02He reads voraciously - history, biography,
0:24:02 > 0:24:08current affairs, sports, crime writing, novels, poetry.
0:24:08 > 0:24:13And not just reading books, but then feeding into his diary writing
0:24:13 > 0:24:18lines from Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21Dylan Thomas, Alan Lewis.
0:24:21 > 0:24:23It's speckled throughout the diaries,
0:24:23 > 0:24:25that kind of engagement with literature.
0:24:25 > 0:24:31He talks about wanting to be a writer, wanting to be a don.
0:24:31 > 0:24:35I think I made a great mistake in becoming an actor,
0:24:35 > 0:24:41because I think my real desire would have been to be a scholar
0:24:41 > 0:24:43at Oxford University.
0:24:43 > 0:24:50That minute and infinitesimal scholarship, it seems to me,
0:24:50 > 0:24:52is the idea of perfection.
0:24:53 > 0:24:57Despite all the acting plaudits and the CBE,
0:24:57 > 0:24:59he writes in the diary
0:24:59 > 0:25:02that a D.Litt is the only honour he really covets.
0:25:02 > 0:25:05He's thrilled when he's invited to spend a term as a don,
0:25:05 > 0:25:08teaching at St Peter's College, Oxford.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13'I am very excited.
0:25:13 > 0:25:15'I am as thrilled by the English language
0:25:15 > 0:25:17'as I am by a lovely woman or dreams.
0:25:17 > 0:25:20'Green as dreams and deep as death.
0:25:20 > 0:25:23'Christ, I'm off and running and will lecture them
0:25:23 > 0:25:27'until iambic pentameter comes out of their nostrils.'
0:25:28 > 0:25:32Burton's heroes were writers and scholars.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35He gained fame for speaking the words of others.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39More than anything, he longed to find his own voice,
0:25:39 > 0:25:42to earn posterity not as an actor, but as a writer.
0:25:42 > 0:25:47I wanted to write because I sought for some kind of permanence.
0:25:47 > 0:25:49A cover-bound shot at immortality
0:25:49 > 0:25:53and not a rapidly-dating film and acting to match.
0:25:55 > 0:25:59But while Burton the actor exudes self-confidence,
0:25:59 > 0:26:02Burton the writer is crippled by self-doubt.
0:26:02 > 0:26:06It's a theme in the diaries and throughout his writing life.
0:26:06 > 0:26:10In a radio interview in 1982, he laments the shortcomings
0:26:10 > 0:26:14of a piece he wrote on the tragic death of his brother, Ivor.
0:26:14 > 0:26:16I thought, how could I have made it sound so boring,
0:26:16 > 0:26:20because I was so intensely occupied with the entire thing.
0:26:20 > 0:26:25To die that kind of death, for such a brutally magnificent man,
0:26:25 > 0:26:28was unkind and unjust and terrible,
0:26:28 > 0:26:32but I wrote about it so ignobly that I'm rather ashamed of it.
0:26:32 > 0:26:37Burton died in 1984, aged 58.
0:26:37 > 0:26:40The book he dreamed of writing had not appeared.
0:26:40 > 0:26:42He wanted a major work of writing.
0:26:42 > 0:26:47I felt when he died, he hasn't done it, this is awful.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51What stopped him doing it - the booze, the business,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54the women, all the rest of it.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57But I think, in fact, now, the diaries expose
0:26:57 > 0:27:01one of the most extraordinary people of our century.
0:27:01 > 0:27:05Most compelling of all is the tension between the public
0:27:05 > 0:27:08and private faces of Richard Burton.
0:27:08 > 0:27:13Time after time in the diaries, he is again the Richard Jenkins
0:27:13 > 0:27:15who went to chapel three times on Sunday
0:27:15 > 0:27:19and savoured the power of hymns and sermons.
0:27:19 > 0:27:23WELSH CHOIRS SINGS
0:27:23 > 0:27:27'I have a record on of 5,000 Welsh voices singing
0:27:27 > 0:27:30'Mae D'eisiau Di Bob Awr.
0:27:30 > 0:27:32'Enough to drive you daft with nostalgia.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35'I need you every hour. Oh, yes, boys.
0:27:38 > 0:27:43'The dead stand up in rows before my bloodshot eyes. Sod it all.
0:27:43 > 0:27:47'Sod death. Sod age. Sod grief.
0:27:47 > 0:27:49'Sod loneliness.
0:27:49 > 0:27:54'Gad im deimlo Awel O Galfaria fryn.'
0:27:55 > 0:27:59His diaries will be as lasting as some of his best films
0:27:59 > 0:28:02and best readings.
0:28:02 > 0:28:04If you carved, say, 50-60% out of that,
0:28:04 > 0:28:07you'll have something that will very much hang around for a long time,
0:28:07 > 0:28:09and that's the most you can hope for as a writer.
0:28:09 > 0:28:16You don't have to read many pages to realise that what he longs for
0:28:16 > 0:28:21is writing and to leave that as his testament.
0:28:21 > 0:28:23The most important thing to me is, that in fact,
0:28:23 > 0:28:27he has written a totally
0:28:27 > 0:28:32magical portrait...of himself.
0:28:32 > 0:28:38Knowing him as well as I did, this is the Rich that I knew,
0:28:38 > 0:28:41and vastly enriched by what he's written,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44in what, I think, is a major work.
0:28:45 > 0:28:47And I think it will last.
0:28:50 > 0:28:51Death be not proud,
0:28:51 > 0:28:57though some have called him mighty and dreadful for thou art not so.
0:28:57 > 0:29:03For those whom thou thinks that is overthrowed, I'm not, poor death.
0:29:03 > 0:29:04Nor yet canst thou kill me.
0:29:07 > 0:29:13One short sleep past we wake eternally and death shall be no more.
0:29:13 > 0:29:15Death, thou shalt die.