Vivian MacKerrell was a major inspiration for the character of Withnail, and now fans will be able to bid on his musings at Sotheby’s in London, where they are predicted to make between £12,000 and £18,000. The 1987 film stars Richard E Grant and Paul McGann as two struggling actors, Withnail and Marwood, who retreat to a country house in an attempt to escape their hedonistic lifestyles in 1960s London, but the pair’s holiday turns disastrous as they get into scrapes with locals and continue to drink heavily. MacKerrell’s notes give a first-hand account of real-life versions of scenes from the film, such as him drinking a can of lighter fluid and visiting wolves in Regent’s Park.
The actor, who died in 1995, had shared a house in Camden Town with the film’s writer and director Bruce Robinson, who the film’s Marwood character was based on, where they lived in similar squalor to the film’s main characters. The two diaries going to auction cover the years 1974 and 1975, and even mention that Robinson was writing Withnail and I. One excerpt reads: “Up at about 9.
30 to go down to sign on with B(ruce). The labour (exchange) seemed fuller than usual – they’ve cutdown on staff – the buggers. “After a pint, I read and corrected more of Withnail and I, his book and when he came back we opened the bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse that L had put out in the windowbox to chill.
” They have never been seen outside of MacKerrell’s friends and family, and give fresh insig.
