This is the last in the series of diaries of James Lees -Milne, covering the final five years of his long life. He died in 1997 aged 89. He was best known for his work for the National Trust, saving magnificent country homes "in trust for the nation" so preserving architectural masterpieces and enabling heirs to meet their inheritance tax obligations but still also live rent free in their old homes (you must br open to the unwashed public for at least some of the time). . He shaped the National trust and lived to deliver on a vision of preserving at least remnants of a fast disappearing older lifestyle . A win -win situation where everyone gains and Britain acquires star attractions for tourists . Lees-Milne's was an a man representative of his era and his class . His was a full and fascinating 20th century life . His reputation also rested on his writing ... Some wonderful arhitectural histories , two volumes of very readable autobiographies ( this was how I first discovered him ) and finally as a modern day Pepys in keeping his diaries . His diaries ran to twelve volumes and all were published (except for the last) in this lifetime and he did his own editions. . It ended up as too much of a good thing ... As the impression gained is that the diarist then writes not for himself or his family as a private testimony , but for the effect on unknown readers with an income flowing in from the publisher and we the reader connives by being a voyeur into someone else's life . There is a quality of contrived artlessness. This final diary is sad as it reveals the horrors of old age and the onset physical decrepitude and the sharing your life with an ageing and then dying wife . But Lees- Milne had that stiff upper lip British approach to fate and kept engaged , occupied and interested in his kind of people, hearing thr first cuckoo and his priveleged social world . His life was in the provinces , a country village in the South West , but trips to London, many luncheons, visits and house visits , hob nibbling with old friends. I would have preferred more on his actual work. They say that in old age one's life shrinks to ultimately your house, your garden, four walls and finally the four corners of your own bed . All worth fighting against and resisting which James L -M certainly did . His diaries reveal the measure of the man, someone assured in his knowledge of his subject (architectural history) , an excessive snob, self deprecating, very vain, sexually ambivalent , with a waspish twist in the rapier type of humor . He gives very sharp pen portraits of the many characters he encounters or remembers from his youth He was very well connected and thought it important to drop names in just about every entry . He does not come across as a likeable person.... How did he keep his friends ? Nothing here on the books he was reading or world politics and affairs . Your reading logic is constantly interrupted by needing to also read the numerous footnotes to discover who all these titled people were or are , ( carefully recorded with dates of birth and death, titles, marriages , divorces and lineage) , but an end biographical glossary woukd have worked better. His sharp nettled sentences puts barbs into friend and foe alike and give the diaries their appeal... It's their quirkiness that is original but perhaps a little contrrived . The diaries avoid being boring as you pick up inside tit bits and the scandals of the day about the royal family , bishops, duchesses , ladies , business people of note , socialites etc. Lees-Milne is well served by his editor and biographer Michael Bloch who edited this final volume of diaries . There are no photographs . You are either a fan and an admirer of Lees Milne or you rile at the snobbery and affectations . To promote his writing and his books despite his passing more than 10 years ago there is a James Lees-Milne website ... An irony as he was not computer literate.

One of our finest and most entertaining diarists of recent years. I would have loved to have met him. ( )