The Last Diaries: In and Out of the Wilderness [Paperback]

This had a press date of 31 July. Jane did an extremely good event at the Winchester Festival with Ion on 10 July and she will also be attending the Folkestone Festival on 24 September. Ion did an interview with one of his local papers THE LYNN NEWS and the EASTERN DAILY PRESS have also said they will do apiece on the book. Ion has also done interviews with BBC RADIO WALES and KLFM. Reviews have been good: 'It's worth reading just for the pleasure of once more being in the company of this strange but mesmerising man.'MAIL ON SUNDAY'Much of the diary is taken up with Al's decision to leave the Commons in 1992, the publication of his earlier diaries and then his return to politics in1997. But Ion Trewin, the editor, has done a terrific job balancing this - it occasionally seems like ancient history - with Al's other concerns, domestic, motoring, romantic and, ultimately, medical as he faces his death with peevish courage'THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 'These journals cover Alan Clark's politicalcomeback as MP for Kensington and Chelsea five years after his retirement in1992 and end with a touching diary of his last illness by his wife Jane.'SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'this chronic hypochondriac proved brave and resilent when he became genuinely ill with the brain cancer that killed him'SUNDAY TIMES On theTV dramatisation of the diaries, John Hurt is being hotly tipped to play Alan Clarke. This will go out on BBC 4 first (most likely November) and then BBC2

'With his DIARIES, he has written himself into the life of our times with a panache and candour that ranks him next to Boswell or Pepys' The Times

The first two volumes of Alan Clark's were irresistible, irreverent, infamous, outrageous. This last volume is a fitting finale to the work of a man who has been described as 'the best diarist of his century'. The third volume begins in 1991 with Alan Clark contemplating quitting as an MP. Life at Saltwood Castle, his home, hangs heavy; then comes the Scott inquiry and the Matrix Churchill affair. Publication of the first volume of the Diaries leads 'the coven', a family of former girlfriends, to sell their story to the NEWS OF THE WORLD. This volume follows his attempts to return to Westminster, an affair that threatens his marriage, and closes with the tragedy of his final months when he is diagnosed with a brain tumour, but keeps his diary until he can no longer focus on the page.

Ion Trewin is a London publisher. Originally a journalist, he was Literary Editor of The Times 1972-79. He was Alan Clark's editor and publisher for the original 'Diaries' and following his death edited two further volumes of the celebrated diaries. In 2008 he edited and introduced THE HUGO YOUNG PAPERS: Thirty Years of British Politics Off the Record (Allen Lane) which won the Channel 4 Political Book of the Year Award 2009. Married with a son who is a literary agent and a daughter who is a teacher, he has since 2006 been literary director of the Man Booker prizes. He was chairman of the Cheltenham Literature Festival 1996-2007.

Alan Clark, educated at Eton and Oxford, read for the Bar but did not practise. Tory MP for Plymouth Sutton 1972-1992; Kensington and Chelsea, 1997-99. Various junior ministerial appointments in the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments of the 1980s. Best-known for his Diaries (three vols) which The Times placed in the Samuel Pepys class. They were filmed by teh BBC with John Hurt as Clark and Jenny Agutter as Jane Clark. Alan Clark died in 1999.