here. Just a preserved old burnt-out farmhouse, with a lovely oak tree in the garden and a plaque or two. One gets the impression of quite severe intelligence here, and of a reticence that has accumulated over the years – a necessary reticence given that neighbours and families would have been divided by the events of the Civil War.
We go to the Four-Alls pub and hear stories of the various directors and actors who passed through here, researching the same film. Michael Cimino, Kevin Costner, even, apparently, John Huston. Kevin Costner we are told turned down the offer of a pint of Guinness for a cup of tea. Liam immediately orders four more pints. Then four more and more again until I’m almost footless.
Neil Jordan
20 January
1917 [Panshanger in Hertfordshire, home of Lord Desborough]
Instead of going to church, a party conducted by Lord Desborough went over to see the German prisoners. There are about a hundred of them in the park and they work in the woods. I was not allowed to talk German to them. The specimens I saw were of the meek-and-mild type, not at all ‘blond beasts’. They had rather ignominious identification marks in the form of a blue disc patched somewhere on to their backs: it looked as though its purpose was to afford a bull’s eye to the marksman if they attempted to escape.
Lady Cynthia Asquith
1936
Eventually we get to Tain and go to the little inn where we are received by a man in a kilt and given a dram. We walk across to the Town Hall, where there are the Provost, two ex-Provosts, and the local dominie. A good platform. The hall is amazingly full for such a night. The gallery is packed. The Provost makes a speech, and then I talk for 45 minutes. It goes very well indeed. Then we take the old boys round to the inn and have more drams. And then off we go into the night. Twenty-five miles to Dingwall skidding and slithering. The sound of water in the mist. Then the lighted hotel and the journalists in the lounge and warmth and sandwiches.
‘How is the King?’ is our first question. ‘The 11.45 bulletin was bad. It said that His Majesty’s life was moving peacefully to its close.’ How strange! That little hotel at Dingwall, the journalists, the heated room, beer, whisky, tobacco, and the snow whirling over the Highlands outside. And the passing of an epoch. I think back to that evening twenty-six years ago when I was having supper at the Carlton and the waiter came and turned out the lights: ‘The King is dead.’
Harold Nicolson
1941 [Dresden]
A couple of weeks ago at the Jewish tea downstairs with the Katzes and Kreidles, Leipziger, an elderly medical officer and insurance doctor, garrulously and somewhat boastfully and conceitedly monopolized the conversation; recently Frau Voss comes back enchanted from one of her bridge parties: The medical officer had read so interestingly from a book about the doctor, it is his own life. So now all the Jews who have been thrown out are writing their autobiography, and I am one of twenty thousand . . . And yet: The book will be good, and it helps me pass the time. But then the old doubt also revived again, whether it would not have been better for me to learn English. Now on the one hand the new reduction in our money is in the offing, on the other the block on American visas has been lifted and it will soon be the turn of our quota number, and Sussmann . . . has passed on my documents by airmail to Georg. Wait and see . . .
It continues to be cold with snow (without interruption since December), apartment difficult to heat, bad chilblains on my chapped and swollen hands.
Victor Klemperer
1995
Travel back to Dublin. Do the Late, Late Show with Gay Byrne. For those who don’t know, this is the Irish equivalent of Dave Letterman and Jay Leno rolled into one. And it has been running since they have had television in Ireland. I’ve avoided it for years, because it is the one thing that makes your face known here. As it is, I’m generally confused with Jim Sheridan and complimented for My Left Foot, which is fine by me. Actors and rock stars deserve that recognition since they’re paid so much. Writers and directors are paid to be anonymous. And halfway through the show I realise that anonymity here for me is gone for ever. The interest in this Collins film is turning it into a national institution. My problem now is how to make a film that won’t feel like a national institution.
Neil Jordan
21 January
1664
Up, and after sending my wife to my aunt Wight’s to get a place to see Turner hanged, I to the office, where we sat all the morning. And at noon going to the ‘Change, and seeing people flock in the City, I enquired and found that Turner was not yet hanged. And so I went among them to Leadenhall Street, and to St. Mary Axe, where he lived, and there I got for a shilling to stand upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an houre before the execution was done; he delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another, in hopes of a reprieve; but none came, and at last was flung off the ladder in his cloake. A comely-looked man he was, and kept his countenance to the end: I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at least 12 or 14,000 people in the street.
Samuel Pepys
1854
Here is a fact which needs to be remembered more often. Thackeray spent thirty years preparing to write his first novel, but Alexandre Dumas writes two a week.
Leo Tolstoy
1858 [New Orleans]
I am astonished more and more at the stupid extravagance of the women. Mrs H. (who gains her living by keeping a boarding house) has spent, she says, at least £60 on hair dyes in the last ten years. All the ladies, even little girls, wear white powder on their faces and many rouge. All wear silk dresses in the street and my carmelite [woollen material] and grey linen dresses are so singular here that many ladies would refuse to walk with me. Fashion rules so absolutely that to wear a hat requires great courage. Leather boots for ladies are considered monstrous. I never saw such utter astonishment as is depicted on the faces of the populace when I return from a sketching excursion. I do not like to come back alone so the Dr [her husband] always comes for me.
The people in the house would lend me any amount of flower garden bonnets if I would but go out in them. This is so like the Americans – they are generous and kind but will not let you go your own way in the world. My little plain bonnet and plaid ribbon is despised, all my wardrobe considered shabby and triste. I never saw people dress so much, and I must confess, too, with a certain taste which is caught from the French.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
1915
A stormy day. We walked back this morning. J. [John Middleton Murry; they married in 1918] told me a dream. We quarrelled all the way home more or less. It has rained and snowed and hailed and the wind blows. The dog at the inn howls. A man far away is playing the bugle. I have read and sewed today, but not written a word. I want to to-night. It is so funny to sit quietly sewing, while my heart is never for a moment still. I am dreadfully tired in head and body. This sad place is killing me. I live upon old made-up dreams; but they do not deceive either of us.
Later I am in the sitting-room downstairs. The wind howls outside, but here it is so warm and pleasant. It looks like a real room where real people have lived. My sewing-basket is on the table: under the bookcase are poked J.’s old house shoes. The black chair, half
