Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A moving conclusion to an extraordinary series, 28 Oct 2002
The third and final volume of the Clark diaries opens with Clark on the verge of standing down as an M.P., a decision he characteristically keeps from his local constituency until some three weeks before the general election. Almost immediately he regrets no longer being on the inside of politics - the delights of Saltwood, Eriboll and the "big book" (finally published as The Tories) are not enough, not does he seem able to find the time for themselves he has been promising Jane Clark for years - and he begins to plan his return. Calling on God, whom Clark acknowledges has been more than generous already, to assist, he is, despite the publication of the first volume of the Diaries and the fury of the Coven, Matrix Churchill and the Scott enquiry, returned at the age of 69 as the member for Kensington & Chelsea,that most desirable of seats. Encouraged by what Clark considers to have been nothing short of divine intervention, Clark wonders whether it might not be his final calling to assume the leadership and save the Tory party.Readers of the earlier volumes will not be disappointed - the fast cars, the women, the money worries, the political gossip and insight are all here. And yet this is, perhaps, a more intimate and revealing volume. Clark's relationship with God and his sense of his own mortality (and Clark did not until the very end realise how little time he had) are much more evident. Indeed it is as if Clark was consciously bringing the reader more into his confidence. The entries for the summer of 1999 when Clark's illness is finally diagnosed, are genuinely moving and, when Clark is too ill to continue, Jane Clark provides her own diary of the final few weeks of his life. Whatever may be remembered of Clark the historian and Clark the politician, Clark the diarist has provided an unforgettable contribution to our literature.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling reading and a tragic end, 23 Jan 2003
By A Customer
The wilderness years, with AC regretting his decision to leave parliament, and becoming an 'Outsider'
Then as he puts it "A right winger with a reputation for indiscretion and a lurid private life" returns triumphant to the house as MP for Kensington and Chelsea. Sadly cut off in his prime by his fatal illness, AC (and Jane's) journals for the period May to September 1999 are gut-wrenching.
A great book, even for those without a great interest in politics. Also interesting to read with the benefit of hindsight, with the current state of the Tory party.
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Public Bombast And Private Anguish, 27 May 2005
Alan Clark had a lot of faults, yet to this reviewer seems to have been at root a decent person under the layers of dross. His faults might be summarized as sexual, snobby, egocentric and compromising.
His sexual activities (innumerable affairs and non-stop wanting of them, even at 70!) have been well chronicled, mainly by the diarist himself and hit the headlines more than once, especially regarding the "coven" of a mother and her two twenty-something daughters. In this diary his main infatuation seems to be one "x", an anonymous and obviously much younger woman, possibly in the political or PR world. Clark does seem to realize how much his lifelong goatishness, as he puts it, have hurt his devoted wife, Jane.
Clark's snobbery is that of quite a number of partly Scottish-English "upper class" people, whose not far distant ancestors were rather humble in origin (cf. the thriller-writer Ian Fleming, of Fleming's Bank, whose grandfather was of very lowly Scottish origins): Clark's Victorian great-grandfather was a poverty-stricken clerk in Scotland before somehow founding the family fortune (in jute mills). Clark's father of course was the cultured and erudite Lord Clark of Civilisation (his 1969 baronial title being taken from the name of his TV series). Clark himself seems to hanker after even a "K" or preferably a peerage, even though pop singers and the like now routinely get these ever-depreciating "honours". Upbringing dies hard...
Clark was egocentric and one of the over-walleted prats who like "classic cars" and can spend in the hundreds of thousands on them. These diaries are full of such references.
Money is mentioned a lot in these Diaries, yet by most standards Clark is unbelievably wealthy. He owned (himself or by family trust) seven houses or, better, seven locations, some of which had several houses upon them: Saltwood Castle Kent (plus several houses), Eriboll in the Scottish Highlands (plus houses and crofts), Seend Manor, Wiltshire (the last two making homes for Clark's two sons and their families), a large chalet at Zermatt, Switzerland, a farmhouse near Dartmoor, a "set" at Albany (off Piccadilly) and another house somethere or other. Yet Clark is ill with worry at times over money, even though he can realize a few hundred grand a the drop of a hat by selling the odd Degas...so a rather foolish man in many ways.
Clark sometimes lacked moral courage, as when (in previous Diaries) he dropped his Bill to help animals raised and killed for fur because Mrs. Thatcher (influenced by the Jewish furriers of her London constituency) "had a talk" with him. A shame.
What about his good points? Well, he loved his wife and children (even though he obviously annoyed them and worse over the years); he was decently anti-Semitic (though in an inconsistent way); saw through a lot of the vulgarizing aspects of modern British life as the country decays internally (although a touch vulgar himself at times); although bombastic, he is not an intentionally cruel person; above all, he really and truly loved animals and perhaps was able to communicate better with his dogs, tame jackdaw etc and the wildlife on his properties than he could with people, though it is interesting to note how popular Clark was with the public.
Although he did have a chance of becoming Conservative leader after Major, he fluffed it until his health deteriorated too much for him to bid for leadership. Like Enoch Powell, he seemed mesmerized by the increasingly irrelevant Westminster monkeyhouse, though, even on his deathbed. It is a pity to see someone basically decent wasting his last months on party political trifles, on accounting matters and the like. The Diaries are very moving toward the end, though. Alan Clark died about ten days after the last diary entry.
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