The Last Diaries

Alan Clark

Shorn of a political role and no longer a sexual adventurer Alan Clark in this last volume of diaries is unsurprisingly not quite so interesting a fellow. The Last Diaries span roughly a decade, the nineties, and end with Clark's death from a brain tumour in 1999. Actually, I should offer a correction. The first fifth of this volume is taken up with a stormy affair but since the woman is never named (even Google doesn't seem to be able to come up with her) it's rather uninteresting stuff. And while on the sidelines politically after resigning his Plymouth seat in 1992 Clark clings to the possibility that he may yet one day lead his party and his country. Irritating and delusional would be putting it too strongly but his analysis of the state of his party (and his chances) is surprisingly flawed for a grown up politician.

He is criticised in some reviews for including so little material on the Matrix Churchill affair, perhaps the only political happening in this volume in which he was a lead player. But while that kind of detail would have made this a more important book for historians Matrix Churchill was hardly the spiciest of scandals and I am sure they would have rendered these diaries slightly more dull than they already are.