I like a diary. There’s something about immediacy that gives a different type of insight into people and events. Why do they do it? Motivations differ. Some  diarists keep a weather eye on history’s judgment, while others settle scores with self justification often near the surface. One thing they have in common is that great diaries all require the diarist to reveal himself to the reader.

Fortunately there continues to be a fair bit of revealing and there is a treasure trove of modern-ish diaries to explore. Tony Benn’s endless entries and Alan Clark’s Rabelaisian efforts are fun, as are Alan Bennett’s and Michael Palin’s for different reasons. The best for me though, remain Field Marshall Alanbrooke’s WW2 diary and Noel Coward’s golden age diaries, which are good, old-fashioned, fly-on-the-wall accounts of high politics and impossible glamour. The Duff Cooper Diaries combine the best of Alanbrooke, Clark and Coward, and tell the story of a man who was at various times a socialite, War Minister, First Sea Lord, Ambassador to France, author and upper-crust, gambling, womanising drunk.

What an absolute hoot it is. Magnificent set pieces about world events and behind the scenes debauchery, bear testament to a vanished age of power and privilege. Even better, the usual motives of self-vindication, score settling and profit making are largely absent because Cooper didn’t want them published as he didn’t want his wife and son to read them. Understandable really, given the amount of roistering and indeed doistering he gets up to. It seems Cooper just wanted to keep a record of a life lived to the full. Good work, fella.

The early part of the diary takes in life at the Foreign Office, six months as a distinguished subaltern at the Western Front and endless rounds of dinners, cocktails and débutantes. Nothing – not even wholesale slaughter in France – is allowed to slow down the social whirl of a Mayfair restaurants, gentleman’s clubs, gambling followed by a quick fondle with another man’s wife.  So sure of his place at within high society is Cooper, that as a freshly minted lieutenant the young Cooper is appalled at having to share quarters with people below his status at the Front. But he soon finds “someone willing to black my boots and shine my buttons”. Which was nice.

Back in London in the 20s and all his friends seem to have stepped from the pages of Wodehouse: Bobbety, Cardie, Chips, Goonie, Loulou and Scatters. Cooper’s reward for dancing and dining his way through London, is marriage to the most celebrated of high society beauties and a seat in the Commons. From there he goes on to assume his “rightful” place as Secretary of State for War. Despite his friendship with The Prince of Wales during the Abdication Crisis, Cooper was never destined for the very top though – principally because of the frivolous reputation he had worked hard to earn in his younger years. He did though find favour with fellow aristocratic outcast, Winston Churchill and becomes his confidante during Churchill’s Wilderness Years. To his credit Cooper was a keen and vocal opposer of Chamberlain’s doomed policy of Appeasement  from inside the Cabinet and while the country celebrated Munich, Cooper resigned from the cabinet to enter his own wilderness.

Until he finds himself as Britain’s liaison with General de Gaulle in the run up to the liberation of France. A job he seems qualified for principally by learning French during endless trips to the gambling dens of Deauville and Monte Carlo and being One Of Us. It’s another front seat at a key 20th Century moment, but even as France looks set to fall to Communists in the aftermath of the War, Cooper remains faithfully committed to unearthing his next romantic dalliance.

This is a book about a thankfully lost world of assumed power and privilege. Cooper floats on top oblivious of the world below. Other people simply don’t exist for Cooper. Even so, Cooper is hard to hate and the story is great fun, with an incredible roll-call of bit players including the killer of Rasputin, Will Rogers, Cole Porter, Greta Garbo, and Evelyn Waugh. And Churchill and Ribbentrop and de Gaulle and Eisenhower. And Montgomery and the Prince of Wales. And Baldwin and Chamberlain and Attlee. And Eden and Coward and… you get the idea.

In among all this, perhaps the most revealing entry is Cooper’s description of a new health regime where he divides his drinking days thus:

A: No drink until dinner, then only one sort; B: Either only one sort at luncheon or dinner or nothing until dinner then more sorts than one; C: More sorts both at luncheon and dinner but nothing between; D: No restrictions but no excess; E: Excess.

It may have been lived on the back of the rest of the population of Britain, but what a life.

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