Harold Nicolson
1942 [Jersey]
RAF dropped leaflets early this morning. Laurence found one and Joyce found one in our garden near the bee-hive! They were all written in French. They were not addressed specially to Channel Islanders. German officers were searching the countryside for them but our eyes are sharper than theirs! It is nice to think that our British friends were close to us today. We are not forgotten after all!
Nan Le Ruez
1944
My longing for someone to talk to has become so unbearable that I somehow took it into my head to select Peter for this role. On the few occasions when I have gone to Peter’s room during the day, I’ve always thought it was nice and cosy. But Peter’s too polite to show someone the door when they’re bothering him, so I’ve never dared to stay long. I’ve always been afraid he’d think I was a pest. I’ve been looking for an excuse to linger in his room and get him talking without his noticing, and yesterday I got my chance. Peter, you see, is currently going through a crossword-puzzle craze, and he doesn’t do anything else all day. I was helping him, and we soon ended up sitting across from each other at his table, Peter on the chair and me on the divan.
It gave me a wonderful feeling when I looked into his dark blue eyes and saw how bashful my unexpected visit made him. I could read his innermost thoughts, and in his face I saw a look of helplessness and uncertainty as to how to behave, and at the same time a flicker of awareness of his masculinity. I saw his shyness, and I melted. I wanted to say, ‘Tell me about yourself. Look beneath my chatty exterior.’ But I found that it was easier to think up questions than to ask them.
. . . That night I lay in bed and cried my eyes out, all the while making sure no one could hear me. The idea that I had to beg Peter for favours was simply revolting. But people will do almost anything to satisfy their longings; take me, for example, I’ve made up my mind to visit Peter more often, and, somehow, get him to talk to me.
You mustn’t think I’m in love with Peter, because I’m not. If the van Daans had a daughter instead of a son, I’d have tried to make friends with her.
Anne Frank
1953
How impossible it is for me to make regular entries in the diary. I suddenly remember how I used to puzzle over the word at school. Always wondering why diary was so like Dairy and what the connection was. Never found out. Like that label on the bottle of Daddies Sauce – it never stopped. The man on the label was holding a bottle of Daddies Sauce and on the bottle was a label with a man holding a bottle of Daddies Sauce . . . ad infinitum ad nauseam for me at any rate.
Kenneth Williams
1973
A gathering at the Savoy after the National Theatre’s Twelfth Night at the Old Vic. I had a giggle with Norman St John Stevas, an old acquaintance from television and radio panel games, and now Under-Secretary and spokesman for the Arts in the Commons. He is an extraordinary man: irreverent, very funny, very Catholic, and he can sometimes be delightfully indiscreet. I have always felt that his heart is in the right place. We were speaking of the energy of the Prime Minister [Edward Heath] in a very crowded week, which included Fanfare for Europe, Boat Shows, and battling with the TUC and CBI over a wage policy. Norman said that celibacy was a great aid to energy, didn’t I find. I said I didn’t. He remarked that since he had become a minister, all sexual desire had faded. Celibacy, he said, was the secret of Heath.
Peter Hall
7 January
1833
At half-past five, took coffee, and off to the theatre. The play was Romeo and Juliet; the house was extremely full: they are a delightful audience. My Romeo had gotten on a pair of trunk breeches, that looked as if he had borrowed them from some worthy Dutchman of a hundred years ago. Had he worn them in New York, I could have understood it as a compliment to the ancestry of that good city; but here, to adopt such a costume in Romeo, was really perfectly unaccountable. They were of a most unhappy choice of colours, too – dull, heavy-looking blue cloth, and offensive crimson satin, all be-puckered, and be-plaited, and be-puffed, till the young man looked like a magical figure growing out of a monstrous, strange-coloured melon, beneath which descended his unfortunate legs, thrust into a pair of red slippers, for all the world like Grimaldi’s legs en costume for clown.
The play went off pretty smoothly, except that they broke one man’s collarbone, and nearly dislocated a woman’s shoulder by flinging the scenery about. My bed was not made in time, and when the scene drew, half a dozen carpenters in patched trowsers and tattered shirt sleeves were discovered smoothing down my pillows and adjusting my draperies!
Fanny Kemble
1857
There has never been an age so full of humbug. Humbug everywhere, even in science. For years now the scientists have been promising us every morning a new miracle, a new element, a new metal, guaranteeing to warm us with copper discs immersed in water, to feed us with nothing, to kill us at no expense whatever and on a grand scale, to keep us alive indefinitely, to make iron out of heaven knows what. And all this fantastic scientific humbugging leads to membership of the Institut, to decorations, to influence, to stipends, to the respect of serious people. In the meantime the cost of living rises, doubles, trebles; there is a shortage of raw materials; even death makes no progress – as we saw at Sebastopol, where men cut each other to ribbons – and the cheapest goods are still the worst goods in the world.
The Brothers Goncourt
1936
Brian Lunn took me to lunch in the Inner Temple. It was like being back at Cambridge. I found him in a little wooden room, reading old divorce briefs. They were pencilled over with comment. The language was not at all bowdlerized. One contained a verbatim report of a telephone conversation a husband had overheard between his wife and her lover. He claimed that it proved adultery because, in this conversation, she used the same pet name for penis as with him.
Malcolm Muggeridge
1969
Dashed home to change hurriedly for the Buckingham Palace reception for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. It was an awful nuisance having to dress but the only way I could see of meeting my old friends during my frantic week.
It was nice to see Indira Gandhi again: I warm to her. She is a pleasant, rather shy and unassuming woman and we exchanged notes about the fun of being at the top in politics. When I asked her whether it was hell being Prime Minister she smiled and said, ‘It is a challenge.’ Oddly enough, I always feel protective towards her.
Every group I spoke to greeted me as the first woman Prime Minister to be. I hate this talk. First I’m never going to be PM and, secondly, I don’t think I’m clever enough. Only I know the depth of my limitations: it takes all I’ve got to survive my present job.
Barbara Castle
1975
I have received a letter from Martin Gilbert, who is engaged on vol. 5 of Winston Churchill’s life. Among Sir Winston’s archives he has come upon my name as a guest at Chartwell for four nights in January 1928. Can I give him any recollections of the visit? I have replied that I remember it fairly well. I was
