Product Description

James Lees-Milne (1908–97) has been hailed as the greatest English diarist of the twentieth century. Funny, indiscreet, candid, touching and sharply observed, his journals both reveal a fascinating personality and hold up a mirror to the times. This second compilation from the original twelve volumes (also incorporating interesting new material), covers his life during his sixties and early seventies, when he was living in Gloucestershire with his formidable wife Alvilde. Having made his name as the country house expert of the National Trust and a writer on architecture, he sought to establish himself as a novelist and biographer. With some misgivings he published his wartime diaries, little imagining that it was as a diarist that he would achieve lasting fame. These diaries vividly portray the vicissitudes of a writer’s lot, the merry-go-round of life on the Badminton estate of the eccentric Duke of Beaufort, and meetings with many friends including John Betjeman, Bruce Chatwin and the Mitford sisters. But perhaps they are most remarkable for the poignancy with which they depict the writer’s own feelings of joy, regret, frustration, amusement and love – including a tendresse for the editor of this volume.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79421 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 494 pages

Review

‘Acute observation is coupled with entertaining literary style and ever-present humour . . . Michael Bloch has edited these diaries formidably well’

(Bevis Hillier )

‘Woefully funny, elegantly observed, appallingly indiscreet, these diaries are the best record we have of a world still recognizable but fast vanishing beneath the waves of history’

(Peter Parker )

‘His pages abound in delightful shafts of self-revelation . . . a singularly funny, modest, sweet, lovable gentleman whose controversial prose is yet infused with a poetic vision of the essence of Old England’

(Hugh Massingberd )

‘Raw emotions, fearlessly expressed, spice every page’

(Duff Hart-Davis )

‘Always honest, always curious, always lovable’

(Lynn Barber )

‘What matters the clash of titans, when a clear and fastidious intellect shares its preoccupation with the minutiae of a civilised gentleman’s day?’

(Alan Clark )

‘The qualities which make his diaries addictive reading include a sense of the ridiculous, and a total frankness about whatever shows him at a disadvantage. He is wonderfully observant, and his sheer humanity shines out on every page’

(The Field )

‘Unquestionably one of the greatest English diarists, a rival to Pepys’

(David Watkin )

About the Author
James Lees-Milne died in 1997. Once Country Houses Secretary of the National Trust, he is now best known for his memoirs and diaries, described by Jeremy Lewis as second to none in their comicality, rueful self-knowledge and feline observations. Michael Bloch, his friend and literary executor, is now writing his life.

---

Customer Reviews

Strangely compelling
Why do I keep reading these diaries? There is hardly a page go by without my saying to myself "Oh I really don't like this man." Snobbish, dreadfully self-opinionated, gay yet homophobic, and polictically so far right he makes Margaret Thatcher look like Madame Trotsky. Yet, he does write with facility, a sharp eye and honesty, and really his world is fascinating. The people he meets, eats with, are invariably interesting, even if it is just for their dreadfulness. But Lees-Milne is a very important diarist, and wonderfully preserved the world he moved in. And I suppose I'm just that teeny bit jealous that my life has not been a quarter as interesting.