Product Description

Alan Clark's acclaimed Diaries end a month before his death in 1999. After the first volume (30 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list), The Times wrote: 'The best diarists, from Pepys and Boswell, to 'Chips' Channon and Harold Nicolson, have been the souls of indiscretion. But none so indiscreet as Mr Clark. For its Pooterish self-assessment, for Mr Toad's enthusiasm for new things, for Byron's caddishness, for its deadly candour, it is one of the great works in the genre.' This third volume begins in 1991 with Alan Clark contemplating quitting as MP. Life at Saltwood Castle, his home in Kent, hangs heavy; then comes the Scott inquiry and the Matrix Churchill affair, the publishing of the first volume of the Diaries, which leads 'the coven', a family of former girlfriends, to sell their story to the News of the World. The diaries follow his ongoing efforts to return to Westminster. As ever there is much, much more: his long-suffering wife Jane, his family, an affair, and, not least, the country life. This volume closes with the tragedy of his final months when he is diagnosed with a brain tumour, but he keeps his diary until he can no longer read the keyboard. Jane Clark movingly reads her own diary of Alan's illness and death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #395345 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-14
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 4
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Last Diaries: In and Out of the Wilderness is the final self-revealing chronicle of Alan Clark's highly eventful life and times. The French are eternally amused by the insistence of English newspapers that our politicians' lives must be squeaky clean (after all, they reason, what's a mistress or two?). And certainly John Major's famously ill-advised "Back to Basics" campaign exploded in his face as minister after minister came crashing down in flames as a succession of sex scandals hit the headlines. But one politician always rode above such hyperventilating moral indignation--Alan Clark, whatever his faults (and he would be the first to admit they were legion), was never a hypocrite. When charged with a new indiscretion (such as his famous liaison with virtually the entire female side of a family) he would cheerfully admit it, and even those not sharing his High Tory sympathies would not hold it against him.

Such is the sheer vigour and perception on display here (not to mention the disarming candour--none of that famous "economy with the truth" in these unbuttoned pieces), that it's a considerable cause for regret that this is the last we will have from the late politician. In the great tradition of such diarists as Pepys, Clark delivers a fascinating picture of an era and his place in it. Just a few words of Clark on (for instance) Tony Benn displays Clark's from-the-hip observations: "His mind is so quick and versatile--but the loony prejudice just beneath the surface... the motivation that keeps him active." All those anodyne politicians' memoirs, which strove to be as unrevealing as possible, look even paler next to a document as forceful as this. Whether or not your name is in the index, this is absolutely fascinating reading from a flawed politician who nevertheless makes most of his colleagues--in and out of the Tory party--look uninspiring figures indeed. --Barry Forshaw

From the Inside Flap
Alan Clark's last diaries? Sad, but true. After the universal delight that greeted the original volume about life in successive Margaret Thatcher governments ('The most compelling account of modern politics I have ever read,' wrote Robert Harris) came a second effervescent dose that began with his entry into politics ('Pure joy', cheered Lynn Barber). The Last Diaries will not disappoint. Opening as Clark, newly inducted into the Privy Council in the spring of 1991, contemplates his future, they end shortly before his untimely death in 1999. What a decade it proves to be! Convinced that the Tories will lose the 1992 General Election, Clark quits the Commons after close on two decades. It is a decision he quickly rues. His expectation that he would simply carry on - as a Tory peer - is cruelly unfulfilled. Even the consolation of a 'resignation knighthood' is denied him. Yet he is rarely out of the news. The publication of the first volume of his Diaries gives him praise, celebrity and notoriety. His political past catches up with him in the Matrix Churchill trial where Clark utters the memorable phrase, 'economical with the actualite'. And as John Major's government lurches from disaster to disaster Clark chases a Tory nomination that will return him to the House that he misses so much. His personal life is complicated. Will his departure from Parliament spell the end to a long-running affair? What of 'the coven', a mother and two daughters with whom he had been involved, whose reappearance puts him on to tabloid front pages and leads to the press laying siege to his home at Saltwood Castle? And then there is his wife Jane, 'darling Jane', and their two sons. The last decade may have its ups and downs, but when after years of intermittent hypochondria serious ill health strikes it is his family that counts. And this volume closes with Jane Clark's own diary, the moving record of the last weeks of her husband's life. The Last Diaries are a memorable finale - in the words of The Times - to 'one of the great works of the genre.' ILLUSTRATED 20 in UK only Alan Clark, MP for Plymouth (Sutton) 1974-1992 and Kensington and Chelsea, 1997-1999, was Minister of Trade, 1986-1989, and Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, 1989-1992. He published three novels, but made his reputation as a historian with The Donkeys: A History of the BEF in 1915, followed by The Fall of Crete, Barbarossa: the Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945 and Aces High: The War in the Air Over the Western Front, 1914-1918. He also edited the private diaries of Viscount Lee of Fareham, A Good Innings. After quitting the House of Commons in 1992 he published his Diaries the following year. His political history, The Tories: The Conservatives and the Nation State, appeared in 1998. A second volume of his Diaries, covering his entry into politics until the Falklands War, was published in 2000, and a collection of his motoring journalism in 2001 under the title Back Fire: A Passion for Cars and Motoring in 2001. Alan Clark was married with two sons. He lived at Saltwood Cas

From the Back Cover
[picture to come] [Caption to go under picture on back of jacket] With 'TC', a tame jackdaw, and Hannah, one of the Clarks' two rottweiler sisters, in the Green Room. Paperwork was often out of control, as in April 1994: '... absurdly laden, now, with the various trays. Behind me several Pisa towers of sundry newsprint, car-sale catalogues, important incoming letters interleaved (I don't doubt) and every kind of unexpected document I've beside my chair and on the bookcase.' 'With his Diaries, he has written himself into the life of our times with a panache and candour that ranks him next to Boswell or Pepys' The Times 'The only question now is whether Clark is the greatest English diarist of the twentieth century or merely one of the top five' Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph

Customer Reviews

A moving conclusion to an extraordinary series
The third and final volume of the Clark diaries opens with Clark on the verge of standing down as an M.P., a decision he characteristically keeps from his local constituency until some three weeks before the general election. Almost immediately he regrets no longer being on the inside of politics - the delights of Saltwood, Eriboll and the "big book" (finally published as The Tories) are not enough, not does he seem able to find the time for themselves he has been promising Jane Clark for years - and he begins to plan his return. Calling on God, whom Clark acknowledges has been more than generous already, to assist, he is, despite the publication of the first volume of the Diaries and the fury of the Coven, Matrix Churchill and the Scott enquiry, returned at the age of 69 as the member for Kensington & Chelsea,that most desirable of seats. Encouraged by what Clark considers to have been nothing short of divine intervention, Clark wonders whether it might not be his final calling to assume the leadership and save the Tory party.

Readers of the earlier volumes will not be disappointed - the fast cars, the women, the money worries, the political gossip and insight are all here. And yet this is, perhaps, a more intimate and revealing volume. Clark's relationship with God and his sense of his own mortality (and Clark did not until the very end realise how little time he had) are much more evident. Indeed it is as if Clark was consciously bringing the reader more into his confidence. The entries for the summer of 1999 when Clark's illness is finally diagnosed, are genuinely moving and, when Clark is too ill to continue, Jane Clark provides her own diary of the final few weeks of his life.

Whatever may be remembered of Clark the historian and Clark the politician, Clark the diarist has provided an unforgettable contribution to our literature.

Compelling reading and a tragic end
The wilderness years, with AC regretting his decision to leave parliament, and becoming an 'Outsider'
Then as he puts it "A right winger with a reputation for indiscretion and a lurid private life" returns triumphant to the house as MP for Kensington and Chelsea. Sadly cut off in his prime by his fatal illness, AC (and Jane's) journals for the period May to September 1999 are gut-wrenching.
A great book, even for those without a great interest in politics. Also interesting to read with the benefit of hindsight, with the current state of the Tory party.

Strangely Compelling
This is not the best of the three volumes, but because it is the last one, and an ending, you will inevitably find yourself wanting it. Read the other two first though, especially "Diaries".