Diaries made public next year

The British Library has acquired the personal archive of Kenneth Williams, including 43 personal diaries and around 2,000 letters.

All the documents, spanning his life and career from the age of 18 until his death in 1988, will be available to readers from March.

But the library will be censoring some of his comments, if the target of his poison pen is still alive.

'Actors should have a thick skin but where the privacy of someone living or their family is an issue we will go through the diaries and redact names,' curator Kathryn Johnson said.

Selected entries from his diaries and letters have previously been published as bestselling books, revealing his self-doubts and mercurial contempt for his co-stars on the likes of Just A Minute and Round the Horne.

Johnson estimated that 85 per cent of the newly-acquired archive is unpublished material never before seen by researchers, adding: 'The archive will be of huge interest to social historians of post war Britain, detailing the experience of a gay man both before and after… the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1968, alongside the mundane details of everyday life in London.

'The diaries and letters also record the actor's experience of the dying days of the repertory theatre system and the growth of modern celebrity culture, something he seemed both to love and loathe.'

The archive was acquired from Paul Richardson, Kenneth's friend and neighbour, to whom he left his entire estate.

He said: 'I am delighted that the Kenneth Williams' diaries and letters are now at the British Library. Knowing Kenneth for so many years I know he would have been pleased and honoured.

'He was a great admirer of the British Library and a regular visitor. I feel this is the perfect place for his diaries and letters to be, preserved for the future and to be appreciated by the public and scholars.'

Johnson added: 'In the pages of the diaries Williams is instantly recognisable as the acerbic and fastidious character well known to several generations but also, more surprisingly, is shown to be a reflective and poignant observer.'

The 1950 edition of Williams's diary will be on display in the Library's permanent exhibition space, from next week.

Published: 5 Dec 2015