The Maisky Diaries

Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s 1932–1943

Edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky (Yale University Press, 624pp, £25, Oldie price £20)

MAISKY’S DIARIES, discovered by Gorodetsky in a Russian archive in 1993, ‘constitute easily the most important diary of the Second World War period since Fringes of Power, Jock Colville’s record of working for Winston Churchill, were published more than 30 years ago,’ wrote Andrew Roberts in the Evening Standard. ‘Like Colville, Maisky had genuine literary talent as well as the ability constantly to be at the right place at the right time . . . The book is 561 pages long and not one of them is dull.’

The diaries offer ‘a frank and beautifully written account of his London years’, wrote Andy Mcsmith in the In

dependent. ‘Speaking flawless English, he glided through the drawing rooms of London’s élite, impressing everyone with his acute intelligence and adroit public relations patter.’ Maisky ‘understood Britain better than most British’ and had ‘an uncanny ability to predict the course of British diplomacy and its disastrous consequences’, explained Gerard Degroot in the Times. ‘Sprinkled amid his fascinating observations of momentous developments is some delightful gossip, to which Maisky was addicted,’ such as, for example, when Beatrice Webb told him that Churchill was ‘not a true Englishman’ and had ‘negro blood’. His ‘painfully accurate reflections on the British character remind one of Samuel Pepys or Dr Johnson’. For John Jolliffe in the Specta

tor, it is the vignettes that ‘add such exceptional interest to the old story’ of appeasement and wartime diplomacy. For example, Lloyd George is described as ‘a man of the highest calibre, a cut above all around him . . . like Kreisler compared with a violinist from a provincial orchestra’. Jolliffe concluded that ‘despite occasional longueurs, this is an exceptionally readable as well as important story’.