This is an incredibly personal and revealing insight into life behind the camera for first time director but also a moving portrait of his childhood abroad during the last vestiges of the British Empire in Swaziland. Written with considerable humour, those millions who read ‘With Nails’ some ten years ago, will devour this in a sitting.
Ten years after the publication of With Nails, his brilliant Hollywood memoir, Richard E. Grant gives us The Wah-Wah Diaries, his very personal account of his debut behind the camera, as writer and director of his autobiographical movie. It is both a fascinating insight into the intrigues and agonies he encounters in the making of Wah-Wah, and also a deeply moving portrait of his childhood and his love affair with Swaziland, where he was born and brought up during the last throes of the British Empire.
Through the mayhem – the never-ending financial pressures; the difficulties and eventual breakdown of communication with his producer; the quest to persuade the King of Swaziland to grant permission to film in his country; the assembly of a stellar cast, including Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Julie Walters, Nicholas Hoult and Miranda Richardson - Richard E. Grant has written, with characteristic humour and charm, an extraordinarily honest and revealing account of a labour of love and the realization of a dream.
‘This is the gripping, bittersweet document of all the trials and tribulations, heartbreak and ultimately, despite all the odds, the triumph of a small movie with a huge heart and soul’ – Gabriel Byrne
Author
About Richard E Grant
Richard E. Grant was born and brought up in Mbabane, Swaziland. He has featured in thirty-five films including Withnail and I, L.A. Story, Dracula, The Age of Innocence, The Player, Jack and Sarah and Gosford Park. He is the author of With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant and By Design – A Hollywood Novel. He Lives with his family in London.
