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fascinating for two things: their testament to an exhilarating century and their witness to a vanished age of power and privilege... What a man. (THE OBSERVER - PAPERBACK OF THE WEEK )
Cooper offers a view on some of the political issues which dominated the first half of the 20th century... as well as an insight into his extravagant social life.
This is a fabulous, jaw-dropping read. (Robbie Hudson SUNDAY TIMES )
compelling (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
Duff Cooper was as close to the action as anyone during the dramatic events of the mid-20th century. He was also comically priapic, commiting 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 )
it's the combination of the public with the personal that makes these diaries riveting. (MAIL ON SUNDAY )
Cooper offers a view on some of the political issues which dominated the first half of the 20th century... as well as an insight into his extravagant social life.
This is a fabulous, jaw-dropping read. (Robbie Hudson SUNDAY TIMES )
compelling (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
Duff Cooper was as close to the action as anyone during the dramatic events of the mid-20th century. He was also comically priapic, commiting 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 )
it's the combination of the public with the personal that makes these diaries riveting. (MAIL ON SUNDAY )
MICHAEL GOVE, THE TIMES
"deserve to be read for their candour and compulsive readability."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read a lot of diaries and this one is well up there with the most informative and entertaining. I found Cooper to be a man who grew up during the course of these diaries and from playboy status became a very thoughtful minister at the time of impending war with Germany.
Fascinating to hear of his obsessions with women,good food and drink. Not perhaps a nice man as he clearly cheated on his beautiful wife many times.
The insights into relationships with important figures of the day are a helpful aid to understanding these complicated personalities. If you like diaries please try Harold Nicholson's they are probably better and more carefully written and cover a similar period of time.
Fascinating to hear of his obsessions with women,good food and drink. Not perhaps a nice man as he clearly cheated on his beautiful wife many times.
The insights into relationships with important figures of the day are a helpful aid to understanding these complicated personalities. If you like diaries please try Harold Nicholson's they are probably better and more carefully written and cover a similar period of time.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I chose this book on a whim after seeing it in a bookshop. Although I barely knew anything about Duff Cooper I was instantly attracted by the anecdotes and events chronicled in this unique collection of diaries. Duff Cooper was witness to the most key events in Britain's history between 1914-1950, including his experience on the front line in WW1. Throughout Cooper describes the social scene that he belonged to and the famous faces he frequently met and became friends with.
Although Duff Cooper may not seem an easy man to like, his diaries are gripping. Like the biographies of the Mitford Girls these diaries give an insight into an almost forgotten world. The book is excellently edited with handy footnotes to explain the people Cooper encounters. Easy to dip in and out of this book is a must for anyone who wants an inside look into the private lives of politicians and a taste of life during and between the wars.
Although Duff Cooper may not seem an easy man to like, his diaries are gripping. Like the biographies of the Mitford Girls these diaries give an insight into an almost forgotten world. The book is excellently edited with handy footnotes to explain the people Cooper encounters. Easy to dip in and out of this book is a must for anyone who wants an inside look into the private lives of politicians and a taste of life during and between the wars.
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I recently also read the memoirs of John Julius Norwich, the son of the diarist here. Try doing the same. As to these diaries, which cover the period 1915 to 1951, they do have historical importance. Duff Cooper (later elevated to 1st Baron Norwich not long before his death in 1954) was a leading supporter of Winston Churchill and his pro-war group of the 1930's, though I fancy that Cooper was a lot less in favour of fomenting war with Germany than was Churchill.
The author, though born in Victorian fin de siecle times (1890), was really an Edwardian, a moneyed homme d'affaires in both senses, a pleasurer of other mens' wives, a gambler and heavy drinker, somewhat of a dilletante, but also with a careerist edge. He left the foreign Office in 1917 to volunteer, belatedly, for the front line in the First World War and served as a very junior officer (2nd Lt.) in the Grenadier Guards. I was struck by the opulence of the officers' dinners (on occasion, seven courses --!-- including salmon, caviar, superb claret etc...), but that was only part of the story. Cooper won a D.S.O. for singlehandedly capturing 18 German infantrymen, he armed only with a pistol. He nearly got the V.C. for that feat.
In the 1920's, having married (against stiff opposition from her father), Lady Diana Mannners, a daughter of the starchy Duke of Rutland, Cooper entered Parliament and stayed there for most of his life. By 1935 he was Secretary of State for War. A photo shows him looking old even then, at 45, no doubt owing to his dissipated way of life. Churchilll kept him on for a while as a minister during WW2, but he was not really up to it and was made a travelling envoy and, after WW2, Amabassador in Paris.
What amazed me, reading these diaries, was how self-centred they are. Little is said of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism. The rise of Hitler and National Socialism is likewise treated only en passant, despite Cooper's many Jewish connections. He does note that Germany in 1939 seemed far more content and prosperous than the UK. There is a lot more in these Diaries about his food and drink input than about large-scale political events. Perhaps it is unsurprising that Churchill struggled to find a slot sufficiently lightweight for Cooper.
I was surprised, or perhaps put better, not surprised, to find that in these long diaries (as in the memoirs and diaries of others (Colville, Churchill et al)directly involved at high levels of the British and other sides in the Second World War, there is nothing at all about the "gas chambers" within Reich territory, which so many people today regard as being a definite historical fact (though the "narrative" is not so well established and there are persistent attempts to make doubting of it a crime, no less!; really accepted historical fact does not need to be buttressed by the criminal law).
Ultimately, after reading through these diaries, one thinks of Duff Cooper as a self-satisfied nobody briefly elevated to the status of VIP somebody.
Worth reading.
The author, though born in Victorian fin de siecle times (1890), was really an Edwardian, a moneyed homme d'affaires in both senses, a pleasurer of other mens' wives, a gambler and heavy drinker, somewhat of a dilletante, but also with a careerist edge. He left the foreign Office in 1917 to volunteer, belatedly, for the front line in the First World War and served as a very junior officer (2nd Lt.) in the Grenadier Guards. I was struck by the opulence of the officers' dinners (on occasion, seven courses --!-- including salmon, caviar, superb claret etc...), but that was only part of the story. Cooper won a D.S.O. for singlehandedly capturing 18 German infantrymen, he armed only with a pistol. He nearly got the V.C. for that feat.
In the 1920's, having married (against stiff opposition from her father), Lady Diana Mannners, a daughter of the starchy Duke of Rutland, Cooper entered Parliament and stayed there for most of his life. By 1935 he was Secretary of State for War. A photo shows him looking old even then, at 45, no doubt owing to his dissipated way of life. Churchilll kept him on for a while as a minister during WW2, but he was not really up to it and was made a travelling envoy and, after WW2, Amabassador in Paris.
What amazed me, reading these diaries, was how self-centred they are. Little is said of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism. The rise of Hitler and National Socialism is likewise treated only en passant, despite Cooper's many Jewish connections. He does note that Germany in 1939 seemed far more content and prosperous than the UK. There is a lot more in these Diaries about his food and drink input than about large-scale political events. Perhaps it is unsurprising that Churchill struggled to find a slot sufficiently lightweight for Cooper.
I was surprised, or perhaps put better, not surprised, to find that in these long diaries (as in the memoirs and diaries of others (Colville, Churchill et al)directly involved at high levels of the British and other sides in the Second World War, there is nothing at all about the "gas chambers" within Reich territory, which so many people today regard as being a definite historical fact (though the "narrative" is not so well established and there are persistent attempts to make doubting of it a crime, no less!; really accepted historical fact does not need to be buttressed by the criminal law).
Ultimately, after reading through these diaries, one thinks of Duff Cooper as a self-satisfied nobody briefly elevated to the status of VIP somebody.
Worth reading.
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