Backbench Diaries

Rather exhaustive, in more ways than one, set of diary entries by the prominent English Labour Party politican, journalist and author, which covers the 12 or so years from the fall of the Attlee administration to the period just prior to the rise of the Wilson administration. There's a lot of to-and-fro of internal Labour Party politics here, and it can begin to get numbing after a while, particularly the antics of Aneurin Bevan, the Party's bad boy of the 1950s. This volume appeared after Crossman's death, which may have been just as well, since it shows that Crossman blatantly perjured himself in a libel trial he initiated against the Spectator; a report by them that he had been drunk at a conference in Italy had, indeed, been true. show more This sort of presentation is very good for history buffs, especially with the explanatory footnotes (though one for Chaucer had me wondering if the editor was pulling my leg), but isn't really for casual reading. show less