The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Dear Munkey, I feel very queer. I think it’s growing up…
In intimate diaries, addressed to her cuddly toy, Jane Birkin lays bare the passions and pains of a life lived in the spotlight
DECEMBER [AGE 12]
Dear Munkey,
I hate school today, I feel like a sack (dead). I know that if anybody annoys me or if anybody tells on me or if anything goes wrong, I will scream. I wish I were home. Thank God it’s only a few more days till I am, I can’t wait to see Father and Mama. Everybody is so nice but I am just catty in return. I feel awful about it, I was crying in chapel last night, I have done everything wrong, I have approached everything in the wrong way. I feel fed up. Goodbye for now,
I am sorry I have bored you by writing how I feel. It’s the only way I can express it.
Love, Jane Birkin. someone always says, “Oh you’ve got nothing on top or below, why are you trying?” Or some, “You’re a half-caste.” Or some, “You’re a boy not a girl.” Which seriously makes me feel out of it and different.
But I am different. […] Fancy a girl of 14 who has not commencé yet, with nothing on top or below. Laugh, laugh. Maybe it was a joke but it hurts. Jane xx
At 17, I got a part in Carving a Statue by Graham Greene, my favourite writer. He was at the audition. His eyes were so blue that it felt as if one was looking through a blue sky through a skull. A few months later, I auditioned for a musical comedy called Passion Flower Hotel. The composer was John Barry.
I got the role and they wrote me a funny little song, “I must, I must, I must increase my bust”. I was still 17 then and John Barry was 30. He was the greatest film composer of his time and he was terribly attractive.
He very quickly asked me to marry him. My father wanted to go to court to forbid it because I was still a minor. […] Three months later, I was 18, and we were man and wife.
NOVEMBER
John is recording Thunderball the film. I have been married nearly four weeks, now it feels very funny when I think a bit. I only knew him for six months before but I know it’s right. […] He’s much older than me, which is wonderful; he is 32 and I’m 18, and he is so kind to me. […]
All day I look forward to seeing him and when, in the evening, I come back from working like a lunatic on beastly Passion Flower Hotel (I get back at 11.30), I am so happy to see him.
I suddenly have energy and he hasn’t, poor thing, and he tells me to be quiet and then I cry and I am stupid, but it’s only that I can’t see him enough, which I suppose is a good omen.
MAJORCA
I feel so guilty. I’ve been awake for hours, crying, my eyes are so horrid and bloated. […] It seems so strange to think two years ago I was wishing boys would love me for me and not always thinking of sex and now it is reversed – someone does look at me for me but he doesn’t desire me and I want him. I sometimes lie awake and just wonder what it would be like making love standing up or in the bath. People are always talking about it and laughing; they all give knowing glances and John does too, but I don’t know. I never made love in a field or by the sea. I’ve only ever in bed or on the floor. How sordid it sounds, but I want to know, I want someone to want me so much he can’t wait to get home. What’s it like in a car? I want to try it – but most of all want to be wanted. […]
Before I met John I was such a “good girl”, it makes me sick, good, good, good. If a man wanted me, I said no, I was so damn bloody good. I’d get into bed with one, and wanted him so bad I could cry, but I always stopped short because I was made to feel it would be wrong, so I left a poor man frustrated. When I think back, what a fool I was, how I wish now I had.
AUGUST, LEAVING JOHN
Stood limp in the rain, suitcase in one hand and carrycot in the other, at 20 I felt more cold and alone than I have ever felt. I wished to God I was back home, warm and in love again as I was before. The square was dark. I walked towards the King’s Road, looking the anguished heroine; I noticed running mascara and clogged hair in a car mirror as I plodded by.
He’d be sorry if something happened to me, I thought, but I knew he’d be fast asleep, far from caring.
My father had phoned to tell me that John Barry was in Rome in the hotel where we had spent our honeymoon and no, he wasn’t alone. I came back in haste [ from America] with my poor daughter Kate, who was three months old. I’d broken all her bottles at the airport. Michael Caine had suggested that she drink from a cup, which she did perfectly. Getting home to Cadogan Square, I found John sitting in his armchair, imperious, and when I kicked up a fuss about Rome, he said, “The time has come for us to go our separate ways.” I picked up Kate in her carrycot, and left the house forever.
I went up to my room and swallowed all the Junior Aspirin that I’d saved just in case
MONDAY, AUGUST
Such a lot has happened since I broke up with John. I have just finished a film called Slogan in France. There is a man in it whom I love and he is called Serge Gainsbourg. He is very strange looking but I love him; he’s so different from all I know – and rather degenerate – but pure at the same time.
TUESDAY
He is terrified that I will go off like [Brigitte] Bardot did. He loves her and he wears her wedding ring, but on Saturday he took it off for the first time, for me. I’ve got involved much quicker than I wanted to. I wanted him, but I didn’t want hearts to come into it, not hearts. And now he loves me and in a way I want that and I love him, but I also want the world because, through
with dirty golden frames, so beautiful. A cold Venetian sun is pouring in the two windows looking over the Grand Canal. We have a whole corner of the Danieli, very dark and I think it might be sexy. […] Rather rough linen (like chez les Rothschild where I got a blister from their monogram on the pillowcases).