The book would ruthlessly and perhaps heartlessly reveal their secrets for the delectation of the world and yet the whole book never appeared. The book was years in the making having spent seemingly his whole life as a purveyor of gossip and tittle-tattle among the high and mighty.

His contempt for the people whose company he so enjoyed was to get him the better of him though with Answered Prayers, a book that he would consider as his masterpiece grandly equating it with the works of Proust. He was seemingly cold about others feelings as seen in his book ‘In Cold Blood’ based on a true life Kansas murder where he blurred fact and fiction but was arguably complicit in the execution of the murderers, somewhat coldly insisting that he needed a good ending for the book. Yet a reading of the book shows the role to have been that of a barely legal prostitute and was far grittier with no love story. The documentary initially recounts his writing career with several of his books having been made into films probably most famously ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ starring Audrey Hepburn in a role that she was forever associated. Whether his cutting comments were a defence mechanism is debatable and though he held court in high circles his books were contemptuous of such people. As outlined by a series of audio recordings with friends and those who knew him The Capote Tapes recounts how the openly gay writer cut a swath through New York despite having come from humble beginnings and as suggested here, that having never known his father and desperate for the love of his mother who, having given him up as a child then came back into his life, before she eventually committed suicide.

Straddling high and low culture it was his last book ‘Answered Prayers’ that would bring his downfall. Smart, bitchy and waspish he was feted by the High Society women whose lives were vacuously empty and he provided their entertainment in a never ending whirl of parties. Looking like the bastard love child of an unholy union between Andy Warhol, Captain Mainwaring and Max Headroom but with the voice of a nasally challenged teenage dalek, writer Truman Capote cut an unlikely figure in New York high society.

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