Coda

Simon Gray CBE wrote over 30 plays, including Butley, The Common Pursuit and Cell Mates, as well as several volumes of diaries and memoir including The Smoking Diaries, Enter a Fox and Fat Chance, all published by Granta. The Last Cigarette was published in April 2008 to ecstatic review. He died in August 2008.

'I can't imagine a finer book for a writer to go out on - An absolutely extraordinary achievement' Front Row 'Few books have ever been more immediate, more rooted in the present tense' Mail on Sunday 'The effortless, rambling style he's accidentally found himself cultivating here reaches its zenith - He finishes not in ugly mid-sentence but clearly, cleanly, perfectly. A casually perfect but unexpectedly painful early full stop to a life and a mind for which we are immeasurably richer' Observer 'His beautifully written, addictively readable, unsparingly honest journals are his greatest achievement - and will survive the test of time' Telegraph 'Those many readers who have enjoyed the three previous volumes of The Smoking Diaries will find this one every bit as compelling: less funny, despite frequent shafts of wit, considerably more moving' Scotsman 'Mordantly funny, unsparing of himself and others, desperately brave, it is both compulsive and agonising to read' Sunday Telegraph An Evening Standard 'Best Book of 2008': 'Wittily digressive, deeply humane and excruciatingly honest' 'An effortlessly astonishing piece of writing that established Gray without a doubt among the great autobiographers' Literary Review