The Last Cigarette

Description

Simon Gray is determined to give up smoking. Really. At last. 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, and add no more singes to his cardigan? As this wonderful, wayward record of Gray's life progresses, these qusetions are overtaken by much larger ones. What is that lady on the plane to Athens doing with her nose? What was sex like before 1963? Will his name be in lights on Broadway? Why did he 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.

Simon Gray was awarded a CBE in the 2005 New Years Honours list. He is the author of over 30 plays, including i>Butley (1971), The Common Pursuit (1984) and Cell Mates (1995). He has published several volumes of diaries and books about the theatre, includingThe Smoking Diaries, Enter a Fox and Fat Chance all published by Granta. He lives in London.