At age fourteen, Donald Friend declared: ‘Have done quite a lot of painting lately, and have made up my mind that I shall be an artist. And I shall be famous!’

Friend achieved his aim. He also left behind more than two million words of brilliant, intimate diary entries—one of the greatest acts of autobiography in Australian history. This is the first single-volume selection of these writings and includes material from the two ‘lost’ wartime diaries recently unearthed in America by Ian Britain, along with handsome sketches by Friend.

Everyone is here: Russell Drysdale, Margaret Olley, Jeffrey Smart, Robert Helpmann, Barry Humphries and Robert Hughes, Mick Jagger and Gore Vidal. Friend’s frank and often acerbic reflections trace his career, acquaintances and love affairs—in Australia, England, Italy, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Bali—as well as many of the notable characters and events of the twentieth century.

Most of all, the diaries attest to his ceaseless desire to understand and master his art. ‘Neither love, food, writing, money or music, nor flattery nor sincere admiration nor the company of friends (all the things I am most partial to),’ Friend wrote, ‘could seduce me from my painting.’ Reworked into a chronological narrative, and supplemented by material from correspondence and interviews, The Donald Friend Diaries reveal an extraordinary Australian life.