Perfect Light

Jenny Diski

• Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton
  Michael O’Mara, 165 pp, £14.99, June 1992, ISBN 1 85479 191 5
• Shared Lives by Lyndall Gordon
  Bloomsbury, 285 pp, £16.99, April 1992, ISBN 0 7475 1164 0
• Antonia White: Diaries 1958-1979 edited by Susan Chitty
  Constable, 352 pp, £19.95, May 1992, ISBN 0 09 470660 3

One of the mysteries of our time is the hunger we have to know details about the lives of people we have never met. Years ago, walking down Heath Street, I saw, at the bottom of the hill by the station, the most extraordinary glow in the air. I was still too far away to see what was causing the strange disturbance, but as I got closer the picture resolved itself into two figures encased in a golden shimmer, the light zinging around them. Naturally, I was thrilled to be getting my first authentic sighting of extraterrestrials – and in Hampstead, too. Sadly, my vision firmed up quite soon, as they and I got closer to each other, and I recognised the not-quite-extraterrestrial, dumpy, middle-aged forms of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton panting their way up the hill. The glow was not, of course, from their outward perfection, nor their inner beauty and wisdom, but the result of years and years of attention from precision-ground lenses and high-wattage lights being focused and shone at them. They had absorbed the energy, and like fully-charged batteries, radiated it back.