Six years ago Derek Jarman, the brilliant and controversial film-maker, discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the bleak coast of Dungeness, where he also wrote these extraordinarily candid journals. Looking back over his childhood, coming out in the "60s and his career in films, MODERN NATURE is at once a volume of autobiography, a lament for a lost generation and a celebration of gay sexuality. "It"s hard not to warm to the man who, in the face of all the personal and professional hardships described in this book, can still regard himself as "the most fortunate film-maker of my generation".