The Wah-Wah Diaries

Richard E Grant's frank personal diary charting the ups and downs of the making of Wah-Wah, his first movie as writer and director

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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.