The Duff Cooper Diaries

Fascinating for two things: their testament to an exhilarating century and their witness to a vanished age of power and privilege … What a man * OBSERVER *This is a fabulous, jaw-dropping read * SUNDAY TIMES *Well-balanced, honest and admirably edited…this is a dazzling self-portrait of a man who lived life to the full, relished it enormously, and gave much joy to others in so doing * SPECTATOR *These diaries are a revelation …riveting …As a candid record of an extraordinary marriage, this book is gripping * LITERARY REVIEW *It’s the combination of the public with the personal that makes these diaries riveting * DAILY MAIL *Duff Cooper was as close to the action as anyone during the dramatic events of the mid-20th century. He was also comically priapic, committing enough sexual indiscretions to fill a dozen diaries * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *He discusses serious things intelligently, and casts and glittering and laconic light on a lost world of luxury and highly strung affairs, many of them his own * SUNDAY TIMES *Who but he could offer an insider’s view, not only of the Munich crisis, the general strike and life among the Free French in Algeria, but of Edward VIII in the feverish days before his abdication? – Miranda Seymour * SUNDAY TIMES *His proximity to power, such as his involvement in the abdication crisis as a close friend of Edward VIII’s and his resignation as a cabinet minister in protest at Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, gives his diaries a certain energy, as does the busy whirl of upper class socialising and philandering that seemed to take up so much of his time * FINANCIAL TIMES *A portrait of an equable, intelligent man, by profession a diplomat and politician, in private a dedicated hedonist, a reckless gambler and bon viveur, with a profound love of literature and an insatiable appetite for beautiful women … good diaries, candid and courageous * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *Highly readable … The pages on the Abdication are riveting – A N Wilson * COUNTRY LIFE *His diaries are a scream, with a cast including Wallis Simpson, Evelyn Waugh and Laurence Olivier. Gorge yourself on his son’s finely tuned edition – Sebastian Shakespeare * TATLER *

John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and, after a spell of National Service in the Navy, at New College, Oxford, where he took a degree in French and Russian. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service, where he remained for twelve years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and with the British Delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1964 he resigned from the service in order to write.

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