Through wood and dale - James Lees-Milne

This volume of JL-M's incomparable diaries sees him cope with publication of the earliest two, Ancestral Voices and Prophesying Peace. Most friends are amused and delighted, a few claim to be mortified. Even comparisons with Pepys, however, can scarcely calm the author's misgivings. Old age too appears among the characters. 'It is a little sad,' says Harold Acton, 'having to pay even for affection on top of everything else. But what can we expect at our age, my dear? 'Friends' deaths grow frequent, but perhaps death is to be preferred. 'Extreme old age is an extremely melancholy business,' Bloggs Baldwin says before his wife's funeral, 'I have given a few broad hints to the Almighty. Whether he will heed them is another matter.' These diaries like the others are full of surprises. Over dinner, Winston Churchill re-enacts the battle of Jutland with wine glasses and decanters, puffing cigar smoke to represent the guns. Anthony Powell admits an attraction to girls who look as if they might have slept out for a week, perhaps under a hedge. The old Princess Royal's helpless laughter is quenched by her maid, who hurriedly reads random verses from the Bible.;Nor is JL-M's eye less sharp as he observes Bob Boothby's pleasure in describing the drawbacks of fame, or Graham Sutherland's fear of being too gracious to the undeserving. Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote that we need a little malice to prevent our affection for those we love from becoming flat. These diaries perfectly illustrate that truth.