From Winchester To This

This is the long-awaited autobiography by the man who brought you The Henry Root Letters. 'An insider by birth and education, living on the outside' (Tatler), William Donaldson reveals all in this frank and often scurrilous memoir where past and present collide in a hilarious vision of his extraordinary life. The author charts his course from his public-school childhood, through production of the celebrated 1960s satire Beyond the Fringe, a riotous lifestyle in the company of popstars, actors, models and sundry celebs – sometimes in a brothel in which he lived for a time in Chelsea – literary success and on into his drug-fuelled slide into bankruptcy and lost love in the alleged present. Many will know Willie Donaldson and his friends behaving badly from his long-time column in the Independent. He writes in the tradition of Nabokov's 'unreliable narrator', with his insightful contemplations on the memoir's often scandalous indiscretions about – to list just a few – page three girls, the aristocracy, former girlfriends Sarah Miles and Carly Simon, Peter Cook, Kenneth Tynan, drug dealers and the criminal fraternity – even the rightful King of Spain. Moralist as well as mischief-maker, Donaldson writes with candour, wit and style.