Buy The Book: Michael Wishart: High Diver

I am reading the most deliciously written autobiography from 1977 by Michael Wishart - if you are lucky enough to spot a copy, grab it.

'My first memory is blue. Pale, lactescent, this colour hung like a tarpaulin stretched above the orchard of my infancy during those long, apparently endless hot summers. I can still smell the crushed grass as I lie beneath a speckled baldaquin of pink and green apple blossom, relieving here and there the monotony of the sky as continents break up the blue sea on a globe.'

'After mother's departure, I bury my face into the cool pillow where the scent of Caron's Fleurs de Rocailles lingers. I listen for the familiar purr of the chocolate brown Bentley, crunching on the gravel driveway. My mother, as always alone, is speeding through the darkling hawthorne heading for nightclubs which assume, in my half asleep loneliness, vague Xanadus of Kubla Khan.'