Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies

For the latter half of the 20th century, the novelist Gore Vidal dominated American letters. Prolific, patrician, proudly gay and devastatingly witty, he was a withering critic of successive US administrations from his self-imposed exile in Italy. Drawing on 30 years friendship and unpublished letters and diaries, this candid, richly entertaining biography charts his turbulent life and career, his friendships with John F Kennedy, Tennessee Williams and Princess Margaret, and his famous feuds with Truman Capote and Norman Mailer.