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“... notes in which he wrote everything ‘as it was … telling all the truth’. It is this text that Hugo Vickers has edited for publication with a combination of scholarship and panache that Pope-Hennessy would have appreciated. The result is as valuable as his brother predicted, a picture of European royalty at the crux of the 20th century, when Elvis ...”

“... an endless round of lies and harassment, with the public’s addiction to fantasy the major spur. Hugo Vickers, the eminent historian or the historian of eminence, took to the Times the other day to state, among other things, that The Crown is inaccurate – FALSE – in its suggestion that Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were charged by an elephant ...”

“... Staying in Castries for the wedding was a young man called Mr Kennaway. When he watches me I can see that he doesn’t think I am pretty. Oh God, let me be pretty when I grow up. Jean Rhys was 12 at the time of the wedding in Castries, on the island of St Lucia. At the age of six a photograph had been taken of her: she looked very pretty then in a new white dress ...”

“... But for all these cavils, the editing is a remarkable achievement. Heffer acknowledges the help of Hugo Vickers, a walking Almanach de Gotha, and the footnotes explaining every person mentioned constitute a work of scholarship in themselves.Reading these Diaries is both absorbing and time-consuming, not least because they lead the reader down so many ...”