Smiling in Slow Motion

<p><b>'The life-affirming expression of an artist engaged in living to the full' </b><b><i>The Times</i></b><br><br> <i>Smiling in Slow Motion</i> is Derek Jarman's last journal stretching from May 1991 until a fortnight before his death in February 1994. Jarman writes with his trademark humour and candour about friends and enemies as he races through his final years of film-making gardening and radical political protest.<br><br> Written from Jarman's Charing Cross Road flat his famed garden at Dungeness and finally from his bed in St Bartholomew's Hospital Jarman meditates on his own deteriorating health and the loss of his contemporaries. Yet <i>Smiling in Slow Motion </i>is not simply a chronicle of illness and regret: it is at its heart one of endeavour determination and pride.<br><br><b>WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NEIL BARTLETT</b></p>