Deep romantic chasm : diaries, 1979-1981

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Deep romantic chasm : diaries, 1979-1981

James Lees-Milne ; edited by Michael Bloch

John Murray, 2003

  • pbk

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Note

Originally published: 2000

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The eighth volume of James Lees-Milne's acclaimed diaries is unlike its predecessors, in that it shows Lees-Milne developing an overwhelming tendresse for a much younger man. As candid in writing about himself as about others, he records the doubt, happiness, guilt and other turbulence that accompany an emotion he did not expect to feel again. This is the first volume to be edited not by the diarist himself but his literary executor, the friend in question. The text deals with much else besides love and its difficulties. Lees-Milne writes the biography of his friend Harold Nicolson, sometimes in the process worsting his publisher, the formidable Norah Smallwood of Chatto & Windus. With Derek Hill (but without an importunate Bruce Chatwin) he twice visits Mount Athos, recording the delights and discomforts of a spiritual journey to the Holy Mountain. Both the man and his period are irresistibly present in these pages, as one minute he is exasperated by Labour's winter of discontent, or predicts incineration by Soviet attack, and in the next recreates the values and friendships of an earlier, gentler age.Here he is as engaging and readable as ever, mixing candour and an often malicious wit with generosity of spirit and sympathy for human frailty. As always, he writes with the sharp eye of a novelist and is amusingly observant about inconstancies of feeling and opinion, especially his own. Diffident, penetrating, thoughtful, prejudiced, not always admirable in his own self-estimation, he inspires the same affection in print as he did in life.

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Details

  • NCID
    BA88903584
  • ISBN
    • 0719562112
  • Country Code
    uk
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    London
  • Pages/Volumes
    xi, 276 p
  • Size
    22cm.
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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