Gyles Brandreth’s Diary
Siegfried Sassoon and Kenneth Rose always say what’s on the menu
Have you yet made your New Year’s resolution? If not, may I suggest that, if you don’t already, you keep a diary in 2019, beginning on 1st January? It really is the place to start. I’ve been keeping mine since 1959.
Tony Benn told me that the reason he kept his was because a diary helps you experience life three times over. Once, during the experience itself. Again, when you record it in your diary. And, for a third time, when later, you look back and read it once more.
For me, it’s not the sweep of history, but the details that make other people’s diaries fascinating. The great First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote in his diary on 13th January 1921, ‘Rainy weather. Does the weather matter in a journal? Perhaps. Lunched alone; does that matter? (Grilled turbot and applepudding, if you want full details.)’
We want full details. Please. (And since you ask, I had a piece of Cheddar cheese, five plum tomatoes and an avocado for breakfast. Nothing else. I’m still on my low-carb regimen. I’ve lost a stone to date. No bread, rice, pasta or potatoes – that’s another possible New Year’s resolution for you. You’ll lose a pound a week, guaranteed.)
I’m currently enjoying the newly published Who’s In, Who’s Out – The Journals of Kenneth Rose, Volume One 1944-79. Rose was an impeccably connected biographer and gentleman journalist (‘Albany’ in the Sunday Telegraph for many years) and the joys of his diaries are choice anecdotes, pithily recounted, and plenty of culinary detail.
On 8th January 1955, he has Sir Malcolm Sargent and the young Duke of Kent round for dinner: ‘Soup, snails, steak, fruit salad, with Macon ’42.’ A week later, he’s out with Sargent and chums for a night on the town which begins with dinner at the Garrick Club – ‘delicious sticky caviar, vodka, saddle of lamb, brandy and a huge cigar which needs two hands to support it’ – and ends with supper at a restaurant aptly called La Bohème: ‘soup, scampi and Chablis, about midnight. Wonderful evening.’ Indeed.
Rose’s journals are being published by my friend Alan Samson, the man in charge at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, whose backlist of diarists includes four of my favourites: Evelyn Waugh, Noël Coward, Cecil Beaton and Roy Strong – not to mention yours truly.
Given that Alan is a bit of a brainbox, as well as being Britain’s premier diary-publisher and better read than almost anyone I know, I asked him for his all-time top five diarists, outside his own list, whose journals he would most recommend to Oldie readers.
This was his answer: ‘Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, Captain Scott and Lewis Carroll, but I have a lot of time for Barbellion’s The Journal of a Disappointed Man, the diaries of Kenneth Williams, and those of Elizabeth Smart.’
Theatrical treat of the month was Pack of Lies at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark, a fine revival of Hugh Whitemore’s 1983 play about Peter and Helen Kroger, the Russian spies who operated out of their suburban semi in Ruislip until they were arrested in 1961.
Leading the cast was Finty Williams, daughter of Judi Dench and Michael Williams who both starred in the original production. Finty was wonderful (as good as her mum, in fact), as were Chris Larkin (son of Maggie Smith) who played her husband, and Jasper Britton (son of Tony, brother of Fern) who was the man from MI5.
The only disadvantage of the childrenof-the-famous in the casting was the sound of audience murmuring as each of them made their first appearance. It reminded me of the time Cissie Cooper, the sister and dresser of the great Dame Gladys Cooper, was prevailed upon to play the tiny part of a maid in one of her famous sibling’s productions. To Cissie’s deep distress, whenever she came on to the stage she was convinced members of the audience were hissing her. They weren’t, of course. They were merely whispering to one another: ‘That’s Cissie Cooper, Gladys Cooper’s sister.’
Christmas is a time for revisiting old friends which is why (inspired by the recent TV series) I am re-reading Vanity Fair. It’s as glorious as I remember it being and I’m aiming for one of Thackeray’s famous lines to serve as my New Year resolution: ‘Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.’ The book has also led me to the Christmas charity I have decided to support. Headed by the present Duke of Wellington, it’s called Waterloo Uncovered and its mission is to take modern-day, battlescarred veterans to the site of the 1815 battle, where they take part in an archaeological dig. The experience provides therapy and comradeship and, apparently, is unearthing stuff about the Napoleonic wars we didn’t know before. If you’ve not yet committed yourself to a seasonal good cause, take a look (www. waterloouncovered.com).
My hearing’s going and everybody I know has hearing that seems to be going, too – with the result that I’m sitting closer to people than ever before. As I push my face into theirs, I see their mouths in alarming close-up, and on the whole I don’t like what I see. If you have ungainly, snaggled and yellowing teeth, do us all a favour: get them gently straightened and lightly whitened in 2019. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it. You’ll look and feel a whole lot younger. Happy New Year.