Wales Honors Native Sons Richard Burton and Michael Sheen

While Tracy Letts was busy performing the role of George in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on Tuesday night, 20 blocks uptown Richard Burton, an incendiary George in his day, was being remembered in style at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

The event, “Wales Celebrates Richard Burton,” marked the United States publication of the actor's diaries from Yale University Press. It featured live music from the harpist Gwenllian Llyr and the singer Iris Williams, readings from the diaries by the actors Matthew Rhys and Brian Mallon (each doing their best Burton impression), and brief video clips of Mr. Burton's work on film, stage and talk shows.

Dan Callister The actor Michael Sheen received an honorary degree from Swansea University on Tuesday night at an event celebrating the publication of “The Richard Burton Diaries.”

The night's unannounced guest was the actor Michael Sheen (“Frost/Nixon”), who received an honorary degree from Swansea University. As a child, Mr. Sheen lived in Port Talbot, Wales, the hometown of Mr. Burton and Anthony Hopkins. He spoke of being both “flattered” and “shamefaced” about often being mentioned alongside Mr. Burton because of their geographical connection.

The Burton diaries have attracted notice for their details about his famous relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, among other things. They also showcase the cantankerousness and wit he seemed to have had from birth. In February 1940, when the actor was 14 years old, he wrote: “Went to chapel in the morning. There was a tremendous congregation of 12.”

Mr. Rhys was 14, he told the audience, when he first saw Mr. Burton's “tempest of a performance” in the film version of John Osborne's play “Look Back in Anger.” At the reception afterward, which featured a variety of Welsh cheeses and drinks, Mr. Rhys told me, “I still think it's his best performance.”

In one interview clip, Mr. Burton spoke eloquently about James Joyce's writings about feeling rootless. Chris Williams, the Swansea professor who edited the diaries, told me that Mr. Burton had “an enormous thirst for learning and reading,” and that his “recall of material was quite phenomenal.” A diary entry from 1968 finds him discussing Joyce's work at a party: “At the Rothschilds' La Baronne Thierry de Zuylen asked me which writer I considered to be the greatest of this century. I said ‘James Joyce.' She said: ‘You really are the most perverse ma n, because when I last talked to you of James Joyce you said he was a phony, and that ‘Finnegans Wake' was a wake only for James Joyce.' I said: ‘Try me again next time and I'll attack him again with liberal quotations.' She is very beautiful and is married to a most engaging man, splendidly broken-nosed.”

In another clip shown on Tuesday, Mr. Burton - who died in 1984 at age 58 - told a story about performing “Hamlet” while Winston Churchill sat in the front row, reciting all the lines along with the actor. The anecdote was evidently a familiar crowd-pleaser; here's another version of its telling, much of the phrasing exactly the same.

Asked what he found surprising about the Richard Burton we meet in the diaries, Mr. Williams said, “Generally speaking, he's very grounded. He isn't pompous. He comes across as a fairly ordinary person.”