The Milk of Paradise: Diaries 1993

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Description

The twelfth and final volume of James Lees-Milne's magnificent diary covers the last five years of his life, until a few weeks before his death at the age of eighty-nine.

Old age and infirmity have not diminished his interest in life, and he expresses sharp and original views on everything from modern architecture to New Labour. After the loss of his bossy but beloved wife Alvilde, he devotes himself to visiting friends, observing their habits and relishing their gossip and anecdotes.

Whether describing an afternoon with the Prince of Wales, a week-end at Chatsworth, a nostalgic return to the scenes of his youth or a day at the latest London exhibitions, he displays the same mixture of candour, waspish wit, eloquent exasperation and human understanding which has delighted his readers since the first of these volumes appeared in 1975.

Reviews

'As sharp and amusing, as generous and jaundiced, as ever - TLS

Just as querulous, misanthropic, greedy, vain and fascinating as ever. One reads, one deplores and reads on with vindictive delight - Patrick Skene-Caitling, Sunday Telegraph

The greatest diarist of our times funny, feline and disconcertingly honest, wielding a rapier to Alan Clark s cudgel - Jeremy Lewis, The Oldie

The elegiac tone, the wintriness, gets to be very moving...A major work of literature - Roger Lewis, Spectator

His wonderful diaries demonstrates to anyone with eyes to see that he was a superb chronicler of the human condition - Hugh Massingberd, Spectator

Funny, shrewd, waspish and wise ... Lees-Milne was the greatest diarist of this century, and one of its finest writers - Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review

Nothing short of phenomenal surely the finest diary of the 20th Century, truly a great masterpiece of English literature - Hugh Massingberd, Country Life

Unique a 300-page gossip column, studded with apercus worthy of a great novel - Harry Mount, Daily Telegraph

Author Bio

James Lees-Milne died in 1997. Once Country Houses Secretary of the National Trust, he is now best known for his memoirs and diaries, described by Jeremy Lewis as second to none in their comicality, rueful self-knowledge and feline observations. Michael Bloch, his friend and literary executor, is now writing his life.