For the Love of Lit and Liz ‘The Richard Burton Diaries,’ Edited by Chris Williams

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the years he most assiduously kept a diary, the actor Richard Burton (1925-84) had the following pet names for his wife, Elizabeth Taylor: Lumpy, Booby, Old Fatty, Shumdit, Cantank, Old Snapshot and the Baby. She sometimes called him, who knows why, Darling Nose and Drife. 

They were at the height of their fame, and they seemed to speak a private language. Together they called Campari mixed with vodka and soda water, one of their favorite cocktails, a “Goop.” They referred to the act of raiding the refrigerator instead of sitting down to a proper meal as “grapple-snapping.” That’s a vivid and useful phrase I hope becomes, alongside noshing, common usage.

Burton’s diaries, published now for the first time, are filled with these kinds of pocket-size delights. I grapple-snapped my way through them and even fixed a Goop or two. (They are delicious and derailing.) But I admired this complicated and fairly remarkable book for its deeper and more insinuating qualities as well. First among them is that Richard Burton, a maniacal reader his entire life, was handy with the English language.

Great article I found on the New York Times, read the rest here.