Gladstone, 1809-1874 Book

One the great diarists and letter writers of his day, Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) was an invaluable witness to 20th-century history.  This volume includes previously unpublished entries from his earliest diaries and condenses material included in the three-volume Diaries and Letters, also edited by his son.  Nicolson knew many of the century's principal political figures, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle among them, and his accounts of the Munich and Suez crises are riveting and reliable, since he not only reports his opinions but also captures the context in which historical events occurred.  Nicolson was also an accomplished biographer and literary critic, and he knew many of the most important writers of his day.  Accordingly, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells, and of course Nicolson's wife, Vita Sackville-West, figure in his ruminations and observations.  As Nigel Nicolson suggests, his father did not merely report, he provided a portrayal of these personalities and their period in history.  An introduction and illustrations complete this compact yet capacious view of British society.