Diaries
The punishing life of a chief whip
Simon Hart describes his frustrations as he grapples with the rivalries and petty jealousies of colleagues lobbying for peerages and knighthoods as the Tory party implodes
More Mr Pooter than Joe Orton: George Lucas’s gay life in London
Beginning in 1948, Lucas kept a diary chronicling 60 highly promiscuous years – though ‘my great desideratum has always been sympathy and affection’
Four female writers at the court of Elizabeth I
Of Ramie Targoff’s gifted quartet, Mary Sidney was particularly admired by her contemporaries for her translation of the Psalms into English verse
Hanif Kureishi – portrait of the artist as a young man
Descriptions of the gifted author tearing up the literary landscape of the late 20th century are deeply poignant when set alongside Kureishi’s recent despatches from hospital
A hard act to follow
Having retired from parliament in 2010, Mullin has less insider knowledge than before, but the political one-liners in his latest diaries are still highly entertaining
The last governor
After 13 years in parliament, rising star Chris Patten had the bad luck to be one of the few Tory…
When she was good…
In June 1957, Robert Lowell attended a poetry reading by E.E. Cummings. Sitting dutifully and deferentially alongside him were Allen…
The life of the party
Readers of this magazine will have enjoyed Joan Collins’s diaries, and her Past Imperfect was one of the funniest showbiz…
This rough game
Through her diaries and notebooks we finally catch a glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith, says Christopher Priest
A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles
These aren’t diaries in the sense that Chips Channon kept diaries, or Samuel Pepys. They aren’t diaries at all, beyond…
Eavesdropping on history
The famous photographic portrait by Karsh of Winston Churchill as wartime prime minster personifies heroic defiance and grim determination. His…
Always entertaining
It is often said that the best political diaries are written by those who dwell in the foothills of power.…
Gossip abounds
In December 1979, the 28-year-old Hugo Vickers, dining with a friend, declared: ‘I see little point to life these days.’…
Rage on the page
As a budding political apparatchik, my first job out of university was as a junior parliamentary assistant to Alan Duncan…
More gossip and scandal
Chips Channon was conceited, snobbish, disloyal, voyeuristic and wrongheaded – all qualities most helpful to a great diarist, says Craig Brown
The Spectator’s Notes
Having only recently entered the House of Lords, I must tread with caution, but I had always understood that it…
Mover and shaker
As Lionel Barber recounts unrolling his pitch to replace me as editor of the Financial Times to the newspaper’s proprietor…
Tears before bedtime
I met Jane Birkin’s parents, who flit across these pages. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an actress in Noël Coward…
More juicy gossip from Kenneth ‘Climbing’ Rose
When this second volume of diaries begins in 1979, Kenneth Rose is 54 and well established as the author of…
![Portrait of Pepys, after John Hayls. The Diary for 17 March 1666 reads: ‘This day I begin to sit [for Hayls], and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture.... I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.’](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pepys1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Lust for life
We all know about Samuel Pepys witnessing the Great Fire in his Diaries, but how many have read the definitive…
Who’s up, who’s down
‘Nothing’s funny any more’ has become the daily mantra of this magazine’s cartoon editor, Michael Heath. Thanks to Leveson, political…
