Nearly 30 years ago I asked Rupert Hart-Davis, nephew and literary executor of Duff Cooper, whether I could see these diaries for a biography I was writing of Duff’s wife, Diana. ‘Not the slightest point, dear boy,’ he replied. ‘They are no more than a chronicle of unbridled extravagance, drunkenness and lechery.’ Eventually he relented and I discovered how wrong he was. There is, indeed, an inordinate amount of wine and women in these diaries, little song (Duff was tone-deaf) but much baccarat or bridge and backgammon for high stakes at White’s. Rupert’s error lay in the ‘no more’. There is plenty in this well- balanced, honest and admirably edited selection to prove that Duff Cooper was also a brave and far-seeing statesman, a man of taste, intellectual curiosity and literary skills, and an amused yet fully engaged chronicler of the world of great events in which he moved.
Hart-Davis once asked his uncle why he kept diaries. Duff was not sure how to reply. He wasn’t greatly interested in the thought of posterity reading them and certainly wanted to keep them from his family. Perhaps, he concluded, ‘the answer is that people who love life as much as I do want to keep some record of it — because it is all they can keep.’ Joie de vivre is, indeed, their hallmark. In April 1916, when every prospect seemed infinitely black, he walked across St James’s Park ‘feeling half drunk with Burgundy and the beauty of the day. I thought what an infinite capacity I had for enjoyment.’ To read his diaries is to ride a rollercoaster of stimulating sensations — sensual, aesthetic, or frequently both at once. He was never boring and very rarely bored (though he did once go to sleep at a conference in Paris. ‘Tell him I’ll call him if anything happens,’ said Bevin, and added, ‘He’s the most sensible man in the room. It’s all a waste of time.’).
Duff’s diary-keeping was erratic, fortunately at its most extensive when things of real importance were going on. Historians will find of particular interest the passages covering 1938, when he was one of the few members of the Cabinet who resolutely opposed appeasement and who finally resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty in protest at Chamberlain’s policy over Czechoslovakia. It was a painful decision, enormously to his credit, for he thought that the government was on the whole a good one, and he adored his job. He watched the crowds massing in Downing Street to cheer the triumphant prime minister on his return from Munich: ‘I felt very lonely in the midst of so much happiness that I could not share.’ Duff was a friend and admirer of Winston Churchill — ‘His enthusiasm is so attractive. I think him the most delightful of men,’ he had written in 1920 — but it is noteworthy how few references there were to him in the diaries at this period. Duff made up his own mind and acted on his convictions. In Cabinet he stated boldly that ‘the issue now was not self- determination nor the manner in which it should be carried, but so far as we were concerned it was the honour and soul of England that was at stake’. In the mouths of some politicians that could have been empty rhetoric. Duff meant it.
The other period covered fully is that in which he was first Representative to de Gaulle’s Committee in Algiers and then ambassador in Paris. For his first years his most important task was to keep the peace between Churchill and de Gaulle, two monumental prima donnas whose personalities clashed as dramatically as their policies. Duff contrived to retain the trust and respect of both of them without ever hesitating to make it plain when he thought they were behaving foolishly. De Gaulle even sent a message through Duff’s current mistress, Louise de Vilmorin, to the effect that, however much the British embassy might be in the doghouse, ‘they still had nothing but the friendliest feelings towards me personally’. Duff was shocked. ‘This seems to me the most extra- ordinary procedure. I am surprised that de Gaulle lends himself to it.’ Duff himself was resolutely Francophile and, perhaps unsurprisingly for one who had lived through two world wars and served gallantly in the closing stages of the first one, strongly anti-German. He opposed any initiative intended to strengthen Germany and, when the Ruhr was returned to German control, was in despair. ‘This means, in my opinion, that there will be another war. And I don’t believe that we shall beat Germany the third time. All we have to do to make war impossible is to keep control of the Ruhr. It is so simple — but we’re not doing it.’
Churchill interfered constantly in foreign policy; Attlee left it to Bevin. Duff deplored the Labour victory in 1945 but liked and admired the new foreign secretary. The feeling was reciprocated; in the face of strong protests Bevin kept Duff at the embassy until late in 1947, long enough to help launch the Marshall Plan and to be present at the signing of the Treaty of Alliance between Britain and France. ‘Nunc dimittis,’ wrote Duff. ‘Although it would probably have come about somehow some time, I honestly believe it would not have been done now if I had not said what I did say to Blum in our first conversation.’
It was characteristic of Duff that when Bevin made advances to Diana while staying in the British embassy he was surprised, amused but not in the least indignant. Duff made love to any woman who attracted him and never felt that he was doing anything seriously wrong. ‘My infidelities are entirely of the flesh,’ he wrote. ‘I feel guilty of no faithlessness, only of filthiness.’ He recorded that he loved Dollie Warrender ‘terribly. But if I had to choose between her and Diana I should no more hesitate than a man who had to choose between life and death.’ Diana for her part was rarely disturbed by Duff’s infidelities. Her son once asked her how she had put up with them. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they were all the flowers. I knew I was the tree.’
John Julius Norwich allows himself only rare and unobtrusive appearances in these diaries. He provides a short though admirably well-judged introduction and footnotes identifying all the characters (a glossary of commonly used Christian names would have helped. Readers will need to concentrate hard if they are going to remember which is Tommy, Betty, Daisy or Gloria, to mention only four of the monstrous regiment of Duff’s mistresses.) Only in the illustrations does he permit himself some levity: the Polish foreign secretary talking to a peacefully sleeping First Lord is captioned ‘Colonel Beck holds Duff enthralled’, while the British Representative leering at a lustrous nymph is described as ‘Assessing the local talent in Algiers’.
One thought troubles the editor: ‘Will average readers, when they put this book down, actually like my father?’ When I was writing about Diana I formed my opinion of her husband not through her eyes, for she was unswerving in her love, but indignant on her behalf at what seemed to me his selfishness and lack of consideration. These diaries do not exonerate him from such accusations, but far more evident are his courage, his exuberance, his sense of humour, his lack of pomposity, his warmth, his loyalty. This is a dazzling self-portrait of a man who lived life to the full, relished it enormously, and gave much joy to others in so doing.
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