Customer Reviews
Strangely Compelling - By: Andy, 16 Jun 2008 
This is not the best of the three volumes, but because it is the last one, & an ending, you will inevitably find yourself wanting it. Read the other two first though, especially "Diaries".
Public Bombast And Private Anguish - By: ianrmillard, 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 & compromising.
His sexual activities (innumerable affairs & non-stop wanting of them, even at 70!) have been well chronicled, mainly by the diarist himself & hit the headlines more than once, especially regarding the "coven" of a mother & her two twenty-something daughters. In this diary his main infatuation seems to be one "x", an anonymous & obviously much younger woman, possiblyin 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 humblein 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 clerkin Scotland before somehow founding the family fortune (in jute mills). Clark's father of course was the cultured & 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 & the like now routinely get these ever-depreciating "honours". Upbringing dies hard...
Clark was egocentric & one of the over-walleted prats who like "classic cars" & can spendin the hundreds of thousands on them. These diaries are full of such references.
Money is mentioned a lotin 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), Eribollin the Scottish Highlands (plus houses & crofts), Seend Manor, Wiltshire (the last two making homes for Clark's two sons & their families), a large chalet at Zermatt, Switzerland, a farmhouse near Dartmoor, a "set" at Albany (off Piccadilly) & 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 manin many ways.
Clark sometimes lacked moral courage, as when (in previous Diaries) he dropped his Bill to help animals raised & 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 & children (even though he obviously annoyed them & worse over the years); he was decently anti-Semitic (thoughin 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 & truly loved animals & perhaps was able to communicate better with his dogs, tame jackdaw etc & 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 & the like. The Diaries are very moving toward the end, though. Alan Clark died about ten days after the last diary entry.
NIGHT MUST FALL - By: DAVID BRYSON, 22 Feb 2005 
The first volume of Alan Clark's 'Diaries' got him a lot of notice & publicity through their candour about his extra-marital affairs & their liberal use of four-letter words & longer words derived from them. He just lapped up publicity. He looked an utter spiv, & he remained to the end of his days, despite the most expensive English education, despite his brains & sensibility & despite his restless & hunted hyperactivity, an out-and-out vulgarian. He had what passed for ideasin the Conservative party of his time, & the second volume of his journal records what seems to have been for him the most significant event of his thwarted career, the downfall of his revered Margaret Thatcher. When it comes to this third & final volume what seemed to most of us a lot more significant than that, namely the apparent downfall of the Conservative party itself, rates barely a mention. Behind his disgusted & semi-despairing withdrawal from politics, & then the late against-the-odds revival of his career with its attendant illusory hopes & voices of encouragement, he was hearing from earlyin his seventh decade the sound of scything, until the shades of night, for years mocking & teasing, fell on him with one fast swoop. And that closing sequence is what this book is mainly about, not affairs either public or private.
As regards dalliances, there is only the tail-end (so to speak) of his final fling at the start of this book, his paramour's name disguised this time as 'x'. The politics is largely a matter of selection-meetings & House of Commons small talk - as I've said the real tectonic shift (apparently, so far)in British politics represented by the landslide Labour victoryin 1997 is passed overin a summary fashion. Clark himself had foreseen it. He even wished for it, seducedin the familiar way with the ambitious notion that the Tory edifice had to be rasedin order to be raised again, & that he might be the man of the hour. The hour was already too late & he wasn't the man. His most attractive trait (for me anyway) as a public figure was his iconoclastic tendency to open his big mouth & say what might come into itin a fit of annoyance or just for the sake of seeing what might happen if he said it. At one point he said on the airwaves that the way to deal with insurrectionin Ulster was to kill a few hundred peoplein one night, & that would put paid to the matter for 20 years, let the US or the UN say what they liked. I would not wish to be understood as thinking this opinion attractivein any way: Clark himself quietly refers later to its utter stupidity. However it gives some sort of idea of what made him an appealing figure to many, including those like myself whose opinions had littlein common with his, who shared his frustration & disgust with machine politics & with mechanised thoughts & utterances on the part of politicians of any stripe.
To this extent the third volume of his journal would be unlikely to attract much notice, & indeed it is already obtainable at remaindered rates. It is a diary quite simply, not memoirs. However a real writer of real quality would write better than Clark does even under such restrictions. There are very few phrases that are particularly memorable. And there are some clangers too - he uses 'passim'in what seems to be the sense of 'pace' (sc 'with the greatest respect to' or simply 'despite'), & he uses it passim, sc repeatedly: the so-called second half of a pentameter has a syllable too many; & 'coup royal' does not have a final 'e'. What gives this book its fascination is the honest & touching account of a man's dying, recorded first by himself & later by his wife when he could no longer write over the final few days of his transition. In the earlier chapters he passes through the age I am now, & nobody will be surprised to learn that I compared notes to some extent, although I do not inflict the irrelevant details of my own status on readers of this notice. What I do suggest however is that younger purchasers of this book should retain it & reread it when they reachin their own lives the age it records.
As for the man himself, it was hard not to like him from a distance, although I suspect I might have found him a bore at close quarters. He only seemed radical or individualisticin the context of the dreary party he belonged to. His views were pretty run-of-the-mill among those of his economic background - no patience with issues such as education or hospitals, exasperation at maundering sermons on social conditions (I'll go along with him on that), grandiose perceptions about Britain's role, opposition to the European Union as being a 'betrayal of our nationhood', a routine fascination with Churchill - I sense nothing much of interest or illuminationin any of it. I also have no sympathy whatsoever for his feeble-minded moaning about a tide of scum rising, the law being structured against his like, & 'class loathing'. This is just whinging, & not very percipient whinging either. The class loathing actually comes from his own side & the 'class' he & his parvenu like don't really belong to. They represent indeed something that can coherently be called a 'class', but what he is complaining about doesn't. On the one hand it is a culture of playing the system to obtain benefits; on the other it is a panem-et-circenses culture of football, unhealthy diets & binge-drinking; on neither showing do the participants have any interestin Clark's sidelined & passé class. The 'modish sympathisers' may be modish & may indeed be a painin the neck or elsewhere, but they are not really sympathisers, only a loose coalition of anti-conservatives. What I treasure his memory for is his large & occasionally over-active mouth, & far & away the most entertaining snippetin this book comes when he defends English yobs abroad taking up broken bottles & half-bricksin defence of the honour of the nation's football team & other aspects of our upstanding Britishness against the forces of European darkness represented by the police who try to keep them under control. He was a bit different, but the nation's destiny lost nothing through our failing to turn to him.
Compelling reading and a tragic end - By: , 23 Jan 2003 The wilderness years, with AC regretting his decision to leave parliament, & becoming an 'Outsider'
Then as he puts it "A right winger with a reputation for indiscretion & a lurid private life" returns triumphant to the house as MP for Kensington & Chelsea. Sadly cut offin 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 interestin politics. Also interesting to read with the benefit of hindsight, with the current state of the Tory party.
A moving conclusion to an extraordinary series - By: N. H. Richardson, 28 Oct 2002 The third & 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 & 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 - & 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 & the fury of the Coven, Matrix Churchill & 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 & save the Tory party.
Readers of the earlier volumes will not be disappointed - the fast cars, the women, the money worries, the political gossip & insight are all here. And yet this is, perhaps, a more intimate & revealing volume. Clark's relationship with God & 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 & Clark the politician, Clark the diarist has provided an unforgettable contribution to our literature.
