don’t think that I’d ever before encountered anyone so overtly homosexual. Against one wall rested two blown-up photographs of Peter, one in bikini underpants, the other in jeans with his flies left undone. All over the floor were scattered magazines with male nudes. David picked one up and complained how it had been seized by the Customs and then returned. On its cover was stamped ‘Nudes – semi-erect’. He works from photographs but not when he draws people. He showed me some of Angus Wilson, one of which was very good although he didn’t think so. He agreed to draw Fred Ashton for me, although I warned him about the Trustees [of the National Portrait Gallery]. The phone rang. It was a Spanish waiter who wanted to come round and strip for him to draw. The time had come to leave.
Roy Strong
30 January
1649
The Villanie of the Rebells proceeding now so far as to Trie, Condemne, and Murder our excellent King [Charles I], the 30 of this Moneth, struck me with such horror that I keep the day of his Martyrdom a fast, and would not be present, at that execrable wickednesse; receiving that sad [account] of it from my Bro: Geo: and also by Mr Owen, who came to Visit this afternoone, recounting to me all the Circumstances.
John Evelyn
1871
In a newspaper giving the news of the capitulation, I read the news of King William’s enthronement as Emperor of Germany at Versailles, in the Hall of Mirrors, under the nose of the stone Louis XIV in the courtyard outside. That really marks the end of the greatness of France.
The Brothers Goncourt
1915
Preparations for my departure are well under way. I am breathlessly impatient to be off, but there is much to be done and the [Red Cross] Unit itself is not yet fully organised. My nurse’s dresses, aprons and veils have been made already, and I have bought a flannel-lined, black leather jacket. An accessory to this jacket is a thick sheepskin waistcoat, for winter wear, whose Russian name, dushegreychka, means ‘soul-warmer’. I hear that our unit will be stationed for a time on the Russo-Austrian Front in the Carpathian Mountains and that we will have to ride horseback, as direct communication can be established there only by riding; so high boots and black leather breeches have been added to my wardrobe. At the moment of my departure, Anna Ivanovna, my Russian ‘mother’, bade me kneel before her. Taking from her pocket a little chain, she fastened it round my neck. Then she blessed me, kissed me three times, ‘In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’, and wished me ‘God speed’. I, too, was a soldier, going to war, for thus did all Russian mothers to their soldier sons. The little chain, with a small icon and cross attached to it, has already been blessed by a priest.
Florence Farmborough
1921
J. accused me of always bagging his books as soon as he had begun to read them. I said: ‘It’s like fishing. I see you’ve got a bite. I want your line. I want to pull it in.’
Katherine Mansfield
1938
I have advised the Duce not to let Biseo [Italian airman] continue his flight to Argentina, where some kind of hostile demonstration against our airmen was being prepared. There is really no point in exposing equipment and men to the not inconsiderable wear and tear of a three thousand kilometres’ flight, in order to give the rabble of a second-class country like Argentina a chance to insult us. The Duce agrees – they will not go. Of all the countries in which I have lived Argentina is certainly the one I loved least – indeed I felt a profound contempt for it. A people without a soul and a land without colour – both failed to exercise any kind of charm on me. For several decades, when all sorts of human wrecks were making their way to South America, the worst of all used to stop at the first place they came to. That was the beginning of Buenos Aires, a city as monotonous and turbid as the river on whose banks it lies. In recent years there has been added to this unpleasant mixture a very plentiful Jewish element. I don’t believe that can have improved things.
Count Ciano
1943
The first refugee children have arrived. They were due yesterday evening at seven – after a twelve hours’ journey from Genoa – but it was not until nine p.m. that at last the car drew up and seven very small sleepy bundles were lifted out. The eldest is six, the others four and five – all girls except one, a solemn little Sardinian called Dante Porcu. We carry them down into the play-room of the nursery-school (where the stove is burning, and supper waiting) and they stand blinking in the bright light, like small bewildered owls. White, pasty faces – several with boils and sores – and thin little sticks of arms and legs.
The Genoese district nurse who has brought them tells me that they have been chosen from families whose houses have been totally destroyed, and who, for the last two months, have been living in an underground tunnel beneath the city, without light or sufficient water, and in bitter cold. Their fathers are mostly dock-labourers; two of them have been killed.
The children eat their warm soup, still too bewildered fully to realize where they are – and then, as they gradually thaw and wake up, the first wail goes up – ‘Mamma, Mamma, I want my Mamma!’ We hastily produce the toys which we have prepared for just that moment; the little girls clutch their dolls, Dante winds up his motor, and for a few minutes tears are averted. Then we take them upstairs and tuck them up in their warm beds. Homesickness sets in again – and two of them, poor babies, cry themselves to sleep.
Iris Origo
1948
Gandhi has been assassinated. In my humble opinion, a bloody good thing but far too late.
Noël Coward
1969 [on the Monte Anaga, sailing to Las Palmas]
We were up to the sweet at lunch when the ship shuddered with an impact and the captain rushed from his table in the dining room and shot up to the bridge. A lot of passengers went running up to the deck, and practically emptied the room. I stayed for the coffee. Later it transpired that we’d hit a fishing boat amidships, cutting it in half & sinking it. We lowered a lifeboat and circled for survivors, and picked up four. There was one dead, and a further four missing. Another fishing boat hove to, and the crew shouted obscenities at our ship. Now, with the survivors on board, we have turned round and are making for Corunna, which is where the fishermen hail from. Obviously this will wreak havoc with our holiday plans. This fellow Bill on board organised a fund for the survivors of the disaster with the help of a priest and between 65 passengers we raised a measly 23 pounds which was quite shame-making. The radio officer said that you couldn’t see the bows of the ship because we were sailing into the sun and it was blinding.
Kenneth Williams
1973
We were bidden to a dinner with Olive and Denis Hamilton given in honour of Harold Macmillan and turned out to be the only other guests and I’m still left wondering why they alighted upon us. ... I suppose it was important and fascinating to meet the former Prime Minister, but I think that I would have to place him as one of the rudest men that I have ever met. He looks exactly like his own cartoons. Now about eighty, I would have thought, he’s a bit geriatric with a runny nose, and his speech is a stream of consciousness interspersed with occasional lucid flashes. He was a pattern of memories, all of them political,
