An infinite capacity for enjoyment

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.