The Wah-Wah Diaries: The Making of a Film - Hardcover

Ten years after the publication of With Nails, Richard E Grant's brilliant memoir of his years in Hollywood, Picador are proud to be publishing Wah-Wah, the very personal diaries of his debut behind the camera, as writer and director of his autobiographical movie of the same name. It is both a fascinating insight into the intrigues and agonies he encounters along the way, 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 - never-ending financial pressures; hostilities and finally breakdown of communication with his Producer; the nerve-racking 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, and Julie Walters - Richard E Grant has written, with characteristic humour and charm, an extraordinarily honest and revealing account of a labour of love and the realisation of a dream.

Richard E Grant was born and brought up in Mbabane, Swaziland. He came to London in 1982, where he waitered, repped, toured and fringed until getting a role in a television satire about advertising, Honest, Decent and True. This led to his being cast in the seminal movie Withnail And I (1986). He is the author of a book of film diaries With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant (1996) and the novel By Design: A Hollywood Tale (1998). He has written occasional pieces for the Sunday Times, Observer, Vanity Fair and Premiere Magazine. Richard E Grant lives with his family in London.