A sharp-eyed, realistic royalist

He was visited only by his children and grandchildren and one or two very old friends, complained Tommy Lascelles a few years before he died; apart from that, ‘I only see some of the young scribes, who, poor boys, think my opinion of their writing is worth getting, e.g. Philip Ziegler and C. Douglas-Home.’ Lascelles delighted in tantalising this now elderly scribe by extracting from a locked chest a volume of his diaries, reading a few sentences aloud, and then returning it to its repository. ‘That won’t be seen by anyone for 50 years,’ he would pronounce with some relish. ‘It is the duty of the private secretary to be private.’

That was some 30 years ago. If he knows today about the publication of this admirably edited selection from his diaries he has probably had mixed reactions. Some part of him may wonder whether they have appeared too soon: was 50 years a serious figure? How long must a private secretary remain private? There would certainly be pride of authorship. Lascelles knew that he wrote uncommonly well, with wit, elegance and economy, and he would be delighted that the world should appreciate his skills. Most strongly of all, he would feel that he was serving the cause of history, that his view of events from the vantage points of Windsor or Buckingham Palace makes a seriously important contribution to our understanding of those years. Almost the only dishonest statement in this strikingly frank and often outspoken record comes in a letter to his successor, Michael Adeane, in which he says, ‘It would not greatly distress me personally if I knew that all my diaries were going to be put in the fire as soon as I was dead.’ He would, in fact, have been greatly distressed by such a piece of vandalism, and he would have had every right to be so.