I was utterly amazed!

Here is a third sample chapter from the yet-to-be-published London in Diaries, this one about Abul Hassan, a Persian ambassador in the early part of the 19th century. He was the first Persian envoy to England in 200 years, and he became something of a London celebrity. See also The Drama of London in WWI and 34 heads on London Bridge.

Abul Hassan, Persian ambassador and society favourite 

‘I was utterly amazed! If such a situation had lasted for several days in one of Iran’s cities, 2,000 or more people would have been executed by now.’ This is Abul Hassan, a Persian ambassador writing in his diary about the aftermath of a riot he had witnessed on London streets. Such a reaction is hardly surprising given that most of his family had been murdered only a decade earlier in a bloody power struggle. More surprising, perhaps, is how much of a celebrity he became in London society, still then dominated by the court of King George III. The diary is rich in detail about the city and its people, and often displays a naive, but intriguing, quality in that much of what he saw was so very different from his familiar Persian world.

Mirza Abul Hassan Khan was born in 1776 in Shiraz when it was still the capital of Persia. For a generation his mother’s brother Haji Ibrahim, was the most influential minister in the country, and Abul Hassan married one of his daughters. In 1801, following a power struggle, Haji Ibrahim was murdered (in a vat of boiling water), and most of the rest of the family killed. Abul Hassan was imprisoned and saved from death by a last minute reprieve. He fled abroad, and only returned after receiving a royal decree of forgiveness and favour. 

In 1809, Abul Hassan came to London - the first Persian envoy to do so in 200 years - to secure the ratification of an Anglo-Persian treaty. His mission lasted eight months, longer than he expected, but throughout his stay he was attentively entertained by his official host, Sir Gore Ouseley, a diplomat and linguist. (Later, Ouseley would return with Abul Hassan to Persia to become the British ambassador there, and, in 1814, would help negotiate an important treaty between Russia and Persia.) While in London, Abul Hassan became something of a society favourite, for he was tall, dark and handsome, wore rich silken robes, and had a very long beard. His name regularly appeared in the daily newspapers, and members of the royal family gave parties in his honour.

Some ten years later, in 1819, Abul Hassan returned to London to revitalise Anglo-Persian relations. Following the defeat of Napoleon, the British had concluded an alliance with Russia, and were less interested in the Persian connection. He again attracted much social interest, all the more so this time, for having an alluring young companion, allegedly bought in the Constantinople slave market. He stayed 10 months this time, but his visit was not a diplomatic success. On returning to Tehran he acted as an adviser to the Shah on foreign affairs and, in 1824, became Persia’s first foreign minister. He died in 1846.

While abroad, Abul Hassan kept a diary, hoping it might be of use to future ambassadors. The original manuscript is no longer extant, but copies were made for circulation in the Persian court, and then copies of those were also produced. In the 1980s, Margaret Morris Cloake translated one owned by Abul Hassan’s great-great-great-granddaughter and this was published in 1988 by Barrie & Jenkins as A Persian at the court of King George, 1809-10. It includes a copy of the beautiful portrait of the author (held in the British Library) by Sir William Beechey, who lived in Harley Street, one street west of where Abul Hassan was staying. On visiting Beechey for the first time, Abul Hassan noted his 13 children were all ‘pretty as shining stars’. Another portrait by Beechey of Abul Hassan kneeling in a red cloak sold at auction in 2006 for over £180,000.

The diary text itself, as translated by Cloake, is a wonderfully fresh portrait of London in the year before George III finally lapsed into madness and his son took over as Prince Regent. On the diplomatic side, Abul Hassan records his meetings with government ministers and officials of the East India Company, which had been trading with Persia since the early 17th century. Constantly frustrated by delays in the ratification of the Anglo-Persian Treaty, he nevertheless eventually achieved his diplomatic aims. On the personal side, though, the diary reveals an intelligent, cultured, observant man, but one very unused to European ways. 

Gold and azure, divs and peris
21 December 1809
This morning I went out with my friends in the carriage to see the sights of London. Splendid houses line both sides of the street. They all look alike; the name of the owner is painted on each door. I saw no humble dwellings, only fine houses of four storeys. The first storey is built of stone and the other three of brick and stucco. The ceilings are decorated with gold and azure; and the walls are covered with designs of wild beasts and birds, divs and peris [names in Persian mythology for demons and fairies]. The windows are glazed with matching panes. Stables and carriage-houses are conveniently placed behind each house. 

When we reached the centre of the city, a bridge of massive stones [Westminster Bridge] came into view which spans a river like the one at Baghdad. Words fail to describe it! After crossing the bridge, we came to a street with shops built to the requirements of the various trades. Outside the shops there are signs. If anyone wants to buy something, the shopkeeper opens the door for him; and then the customer, without bargaining, makes his selection, pays for it and returns to his carriage. Because of the cold weather, as well as for fear of thieves, drunkards and madmen, shop doors are kept shut, except to allow customers to enter. Both sides of the market street are closed off by nicely carved balustrades to prevent horse-riders from crossing on to the pedestrian pavement.

Everything is regulated by time
Above the entrance to each house, large round glass lanterns are suspended from iron hooks. One man is responsible for cleaning the glass of the lamps; another looks after the wick and the oil; and at sunset a third comes with a ladder and sparking torch - in the twinkling of an eye the lamps are lit. The owners of the house pay the lamplighters a monthly wage which enables them to live comfortably. It is truly amazing that in winter it is so dark in this city that the sun is invisible and lamps must be lighted day and night. Indeed, the eye is dazzled and no one need carry a hand-lantern even when going out in the evening.

Every man, whether of high or low estate, wears a watch in his waistcoat pocket; and everything he does - eating or drinking, or keeping appointments - is regulated by time. Factories (and bakeries) and livery stables all have fixed hours of work which are strictly adhered to; and each one has a large clock fixed to the wall which strikes the hours.

Servants do not disturb their masters’ privacy until summoned.

These are only a very few of the customs of the inhabitants of London. They are recorded here because it is my hope that this journal will prove to be a useful guide for future ambassadors.

At Hyde Park and the King’s Theatre
28 December 1809
Because I was feeling bilious and sad, Sir George Ouseley took me out to a place called Hyde Park: it is a vast open field, which in spring becomes a flower-garden with green lawns two miles square. Paths surround it, where men and women may walk for pleasure and relaxation. Other paths are reserved for horse-riders and carriages.

It happened that my horse shied and I almost fell to the ground; but my mehmandar [official guide/escort] skilfully managed to control it. He said that tomorrow he would arrange for me to have a gentler mount. They have truly splendid horses in England; but it is a pity they clip short their manes and tails.

30 December 1809
After dinner we went to the Opera, which is a grand theatre like nothing I have seen before; it has seven magnificent tiers, all decorated in gold and azure, and hung with brocade curtains and paintings. [This was the King’s Theatre in Haymarket, the largest theatre in England at the time. It burnt down in 1867, and was replaced with another, which was demolished a few decades later to be replaced by Her Majesty’s Theatre, built in 1897, which is still extant.]

Dancers and sweet-voiced singers appeared one after the other to entertain us, acting and dancing likes Greeks and Russians and Turks. Their music and songs banished sorrow from the hearts of the audience. It is amazing that although 5,000 people may gather in the theatre, they do not make a loud noise - when they enjoy a song they clap their hands together; if they think the singing bad, they say ‘hiss’.

The Bank of England’s ‘notes’
5 January 1810
Accompanied by Sir George Ouseley [. . .] I drove in my carriage to the Bank, which is near the India House in the City of London. The magnificent building was crowded with people, including some 400 soldiers on parade who are employees of the Bank. [. . .]

A most extraordinary thing is the fact that they print thin pieces of paper each one of which is given a particular value from one toman to 1,000 [tomans]. These printed papers are called ‘notes’, and they are just as valuable as gold. Some 200 clerks work from morning till night making these notes, which are printed with certain marks which make it extremely difficult to forge them. Just as it is impossible to create a likeness of the Incomparable Creator - so it is with these notes! [. . .]

I found the bank - with its vast organization of clerks, soldiers and labourers - more impressive than the Court of a powerful Sultan.

Where it is pleasant to walk in all seasons
9 January 1810
Many London houses are built around ‘squares’: these are large, [. . .] enclosed by iron railings as high as a man and set vertically a hand’s breadth apart. The streets between the houses and the square are wide enough for three carriages to drive abreast; and streets for carriages, horse-riders and pedestrians lead out from each corner. Each square belongs to the owners of the houses surrounding it, and only they are allowed to go in. On each side there is an iron gate which the residents - men, women and children - use when they wish to spend some time walking and relaxing within. The squares are pleasant gardens, planted with a variety of trees and beautiful, bright flowers. Most squares also have pools of water and wide, straight paths to walk along. Three gardeners are kept busy in each square repairing paths, plantings trees and flowers and tending the shrubs. At night street lamps are lighted - like those outside each house. The doors and windows of all the houses look out on to the square. It is pleasant to walk there in all seasons.

King Lear and Grimaldi at Covent Garden
12 January 1810
On either side of the lofty stage [Covent Garden theatre, recently rebuilt] are galleries with painted ceilings. Although somewhat smaller than the Opera, the decoration is more elaborate. Musicians banished sorrow from our hearts with their songs. It seemed strange that the audience reacted to some of the tunes with such boisterous applause that it could be heard by the cherubim in heaven, but to others they appeared totally deaf.

The manager of the theatre, Mr Kemble [John Philip] acted the part of a King of Britain who divides his kingdom between two of his daughter, leaving the third without a share [this was a much-altered version of King Lear].

Next, several multi-coloured curtains were lowered, and from behind these curtains - in the manner of Iranian acrobats - appeared the fantastic figures of divs and peris, of birds and beasts. No one watching their antics could possibly have retained his composure. Grimaldi, a famous clown, performed an act which I shall never forget: he would leap from a high window and just as easily leap back up again, returning each time as a different character and causing the noble audience to laugh uncontrollably.

Walking around the theatre, my companions and I saw beautiful ladies, beautifully dressed, casting flirtatious glances from their boxes. Then we left the theatre by the King’s door and came home.

The artisans of London excel in every craft 
6 February 1810
I went [. . .] to a glass and mirror manufactory, where we observed stones and other ingredients combined and melted in furnaces to produce clear, jewel-like glass. I enquired about the glass and mirror industry and asked if there were any other, superior, manufacturers of mirrors. The man replied honestly: “English artisans are highly skilled and unrivalled throughout Europe. But the French produce a better-quality mirror because of the different materials they use.” The fairness of the master’s reply pleased me and I ordered two qalians [water pipes] from him. They made two sets for me by hand.

From there we went to a crystal-cutting factory. We looked around and were told the prices of various patterns. English cut-crystal is superior to that of other countries because the English have a greater appreciation of art.

Finally we visited a gunsmith renowned for the manufacture of shotguns and pistols. The perfection of his workmanship is universally recognized - he has no peer in all of Europe.

The artisans of London excel in every craft with the exception of brocade-weaving. But European brocades are rarely used here because their import is prohibited by Royal decree. English leather and metal-work are also of high quality. But prices are high in London. For example: a knife coasts four ‘guineas’. (A ‘guinea’ is the equivalent of one Iranian toman, sometimes more.) Even the drinking water is sold and brings a revenue of 90,000 tomans a year.

Rioting and vandalism in the streets 
6 April 1810
On our way there we saw that lamps were lighted at the door of every house and cottage and that the roads were blocked by a multitude of carriages. I asked the reason for the tumult and I was told that a man called Sir Francis Burdett, who is a member of Parliament for London, had spoken against the Government and the King and caused an uproar in Parliament. He was therefore sentenced to two to three months in prison; if the Council agrees, he will be released after the prorogation of Parliament. This evening his supporters were trying to prevent his arrest: they called for every house to light up and they threw stones at the windows of all those who refused. [Burdett, a very popular politician of the time, had published a letter accusing the House of Commons of excluding the press from debates about the disastrous Walcheren expedition during which thousands of troops sent to the Netherlands to fight the French had died of sickness in the swampy Walcheren region.]

7 April 1810
In the morning it was reported that most of the ministers’ and councillors’ houses were stoned and damaged last night, including those of the Prime Minister [. . .]. The King’s Army was called out to quell the rioting and soldiers of the cavalry and infantry are posted in the city.

I left the house to go riding as usual. I met some English friends and acquaintances who tried to discourage me from going out today. [. . .] I met Mrs Perceval, wife of the Prime Minister, riding in a handsome carriage. She, too, advised me against being out of doors and warned me that today’s rioting was worse than last night’s. [. . .] I did not heed her advice and when I encountered the soldiers they all took off their hats to me as a sign of respect. When I asked why the rioting had not yet been suppressed, they said that the councillors were still deliberating and that without a warrant from the Council they could not remove the criminal from his house to the King’s prison.

I was utterly amazed! If such a situation had lasted for several days in one of Iran’s cities, 2,000 or more people would have been executed by now.

Good business for glaziers
9 April 1810
This morning I heard that Sir Francis Burdett has been arrested and taken to the Tower. Ten to fifteen of his supporters have been killed. His term of imprisonment is three months, after which he will be able to resume his seat in Parliament. In the Tower he is not kept in chains and he may even receive visits from his friends.

Calm was restored to the city and in the evening I went to a party.

10 April 1810
[I was told] the guns destined for Iran have been collected together and are ready for shipping.

We discussed the riots and the fact that the glaziers are doing a flourishing business because of all the broken windows.

Old age in the Chelsea Hospital
16 April 1810
I walked in the Park, enjoying the trees and the flowers. From there we went to a vast three-storey building set in a large wooded park on the river at Chelsea. It is called the Royal Hospital [founded by Charles II in 1691] and it houses retired soldiers over fifty years of age who spend the rest of their lives in peace and comfort. They are provided with clothing and food by the English Government: 500 men sit down together for meals. Most of the men I saw there had suffered wounds in battle and had had an arm or leg amputated.

In addition to these soldiers, 12,000 pensioners live at home with their families: they each receive twelve tomans a year from the Government. Near the Hospital is another large stone building built eight years ago by the second Royal Prince, the Duke of York, for children whose fathers were killed in the wars.

I do not know if the King is a religious man, but God must be pleased with him for building this house and caring for orphans. And his soldiers must be all the more loyal and willing to risk their lives in battle if they can look forward to a comfortable old age in the Chelsea Hospital.

20 April 1810
[Good Friday] Today was an important holy day for the English, the anniversary of the day Jesus (may peace be upon him) was crucified on a gallows with four nails. But there were so many people out in the country that it looked more like the day of the Last Judgement.

A boat launch at East India Docks
21 April 1810
We left Greenwich in a Royal barge and travelled three miles down the River Thames. In many places on the river straight canals have been dug to cut across the meanders and thus shorten the journey. A charge is made to boats for the use of these canals.

The East India Company has constructed its own dock for shipbuilding and for the unloading of merchandise brought from India by ship. When we arrived, some 10,000 people had already gathered to watch the launching of the new ship. [These docks at Blackwall on the north bank had opened a few years earlier.] 

One of the Royal Princes, the Duke of Clarence [and future King Willian IV], who serves in the Royal Navy, was there to launch the ship. He was accompanied by one of his pretty daughters and he introduced me to her.

The Prince struck the bow of the ship with a bottle of wine and she slipped smoothly into the river. There were many guests on board and a young child shouted: “We are off! Goodbye!”.

What they call an ‘exhibition’
27 April 1810
Early in the morning Sir Gore Ouseley and I went to Somerset House, a large and magnificent mansion built of stone, like a small castle, overlooking the river. In one part of the building about 1,000 naval officers and clerks administer the affairs of the Royal Navy.

In another part of the building famous artists show their paintings to the general public, who pay two shillings to look at what they call an ‘exhibition’. The money collected is given to poor painters and their children. By showing their paintings here, artists may gain in reputation and attract sitters to have their portraits painted. The work is well paid.

My portrait by Sir William Beechey was among those in the exhibition.

Gentleman driving in the rain
17 May 1810
I drove my carriage to Cavendish Square, where there was a crowd of some 3,000 people. It was cold and raining heavily. Nonetheless, ten lords and distinguished gentlemen had taken the place of their drivers in splendid and shining four-horse carriages and were preparing to race each other along a road which had been closed to traffic. I was amazed that these gentlemen should choose to dress in livery of carriage-drivers and apparently enjoy driving in pouring rain! My friends assured me that in this season it is the custom for these gentlemen to parade in drivers’ livery and demonstrate how well they can drive their own carriages. Still, I felt sorry for them in the rain.

I thought about this sport and concluded that these young men are trying to impose some kind of discipline on their idle lives: they do nothing all day long but write letters or walk about town twirling their watch-chains; and their evenings are spent at the theatre or at parties, dancing in shoes much too small for them in order to impress the ladies.

There are 900,000 people of low and high estate in this vast city; but it is true that only a small number are dissolute dandies. Compared with other cities, most Londoners are well mannered and sensible; and if there are a few tearaways, they do little harm.

The English are always happy when it rains because it is good for the crops.

The Royal Arsenal at Woolwich
9 June 1810
I went with Sir George Ouseley [. . .] to visit the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich [. . .]. There are not enough pages in this journal to describe its wonders.

We went first to the house of the General commanding the Arsenal. He and several colonels accompanied us to the brass foundry, where they make brass cannon and shot of various sizes. The foundry operates for twenty-four hours a day. We watched as the necessary ingredients were melted in furnaces and then poured into cannon-shaped moulds which are placed near the furnaces. Twelve cannon are cast at one time. The moulds are slightly larger than the size desired: after cooling, the cannon are lifted from the moulds by a six-horsepower crane; a steam-powered metal drill is used to bore the cannon-mouths and to smooth the barrels. There were ten men each working one of these machines: without steam the work would require 100 men.

In another place they make gun-carriages and other things out of iron. The iron is melted in a large furnace and buckets are used to pour the molten iron into moulds. There are steam-driven circular saws made of iron or steel capable of cutting timber into 100 pieces in one minute. Other machines perform other jobs; for example, a special attachment makes it possible to taper an iron bar as easily as if it were wood. The machines and tools in this workshop were invented only two years ago.

In another place lead is melted in huge cauldrons which hang over constantly burning fires. The lead is used to make shells and bullets. Children are employed to make bullets for firearms. In still another place workers prepare gunpowder and grenades.

In several open fields, cannon made of iron or brass are arranged according to size. There are also two yards for the storage of shot, arranged so that you can tell at a glance how many there are. [. . .]

There is also a dockyard at Woolwich where one hundred warships of all sizes are built yearly to replace ships lost to the enemy or which have become obsolete. Because of the high cost of armaments and machinery, the Government is usually in debt and forced to borrow from the public.

34 heads on London Bridge

Here is a second sample chapter from the yet-to-be-published London in Diaries, this one about a German tourist to London in August, more than 400 years ago. See also The Drama of London in WWI.

Duke of Württemberg visits London’s sights

The late 16th century saw an early German tourist, Frederick, soon-to-be Duke of Württemberg, visiting London. His foreigner’s eye gives far better descriptions of the main sights than any London diarist up to this point. He also writes of the inhabitants being ‘magnificently apparelled’, but ‘extremely proud and overbearing’, and of the women being dressed in velvet though they have no bread on the table at home. While visiting Windsor Castle he took a fancy to being made a Knight of the Garter. He then spent five years lobbying the English crown for the high honour, leading him to be mocked in English society, and to Shakespeare satirising him and Germans in general in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor. Another quirky link between Frederick and London is that he is an ancestor of a previous mayor, Boris Johnson!

Frederick of Mömpelgard (now Montbéliard in France) was born in 1557. He studied history and philosophy at the University of Tubingen, and then undertook a tour, including in his itinerary, Bohemia, Denmark and Hungary. Soon after he married Sibylla, a princess of Anhalt, and they were to have more than a dozen children. When Frederick undertook a second tour, this time to England in 1592, he was heir apparent to the dukedom of Württemberg, an area in the southwest of Germany centred around the city of Stuttgart. He succeeded to the title the following year and remained Duke until his death in 1608. He is credited with releasing the duchy from the overlordship of the powerful Habsburg Empire. He also tried to establish a new town, Freudenstadt, in the north of the Black Forest, as the Duchy’s capital since it was closer to Mömpelgard than Stuttgart, but he died before his plans were realised.    

Frederick’s diary - or rather the diary written down for him by his assistant - was first published in German as early as 1602. It was given the following title: A concise and faithful Narrative of the Bathing-Excursion, which his serene Highness Lord Frederick, Duke of Wirtemberg and Teck, Count of Mümppelgart, Lord of Heidenheim, Knight of the two ancient royal Orders of St Michael of France, and of the Garter of England, made, in the year 1592, from Mümppelgart to the far-famed kingdom of England; afterwards returning through the Netherlands back again to Mümppelgart. As it was noted down from day to day in the most concise manner at his Highness’ gracious command, by his private secretary who accompanied him.

This was first translated and published in English in 1865 for William Brenchley Rye’s book England as Seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First. At the time, Rye was assistant-keeper of the department of printed books at the British Museum. His long introduction begins: ‘Courteous and Gentle Reader, With all becoming respect we beg leave to introduce to your favourable notice a group of “intelligent foreigners,” who, in the ensuing pages, will discourse, if not very learnedly, at least it is hoped pleasantly and profitably, on the fascinating and attractive theme of Old England - its men and manners, its women and their ways, as they were seen and noted by those observing foreigners during the glorious effulgence of the Shakespearian era.’ 

Rye introduces Frederick’s tour as follows: ‘In 1592, the Count, still intent on the acquisition of wisdom and experience, contemplated another far-distant and more important tour, and this was now in the direction of England. Accordingly, on the 10th of July, he set out with two coaches and several riding horses. His companions included a steward, a counsellor, a physician, grooms of the bed-chamber, his secretary Jacob Rathgeb, the author of the printed journal, with a queue of barber, tailor, &c.’ Of the journal, Rye says: ‘in style and language it is exceedingly obscure and uncouth, the punctuation moreover is wretched. A plentiful crop of difficulties is thereby presented to the translator.’ 

Of passing curiosity is the name ‘bathing-excursion’ given to the tour. The printer of the original German edition, Cellius, as it happened, was also the poet laureate of Tubingen, and he incorporated into the volume his own verse to explain the term:
‘I am called the Bathing-trip, 
For his Highness in a ship 
Bathed in ocean all night long, 
Winds tempestuous blowing strong; 
Roaring waters rushing in,
Drenched his Highness to the skin,
As he shivering sat and sweating, 
Fear with fever alternating.
Ye gentlemen of Germany, who live at home in clover, 
O think upon our good Duke’s straits within the Straits of Dover.’ 

Interestingly, while visiting Windsor Castle, Frederick was greatly attracted by the Order of the Garter - the highest order of chivalry in England - and believed Queen Elizabeth had promised to admit him to the order. However, when she subsequently denied this, he never ceased to solicit her, sometimes by letter, usually by embassy, for the fulfilment of her promise. She did, eventually, admit him, after he had inherited the dukedom and become more prominent, but, in a deliberate slight, he was not informed of his admission in time to attend the investiture at Windsor in 1597. For that event, the newly-written play The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed, and, in it, Shakespeare included several satirical references to Germans (stealing horses), and to a Duke in particular, who is clearly modelled on Frederick.

Linking right to the present, the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is descended from Frederick. This quirky fact was discovered during research for the BBC’s programme (in 2008) Who Do You Think You Are on Johnson.

Along the Thames into London
10 August 1592
The same post carried us as far as Rochester; from thence nearly half a stage forward to Gravesend. Here, having first dined, a small vessel was ordered, and [we embarked] upon the river Thames, which is tolerably broad, and in which there are many swans; these are so tame that you can almost touch them, but it is forbidden on pain of corporal punishment in any way to injure a swan, for Royalty has them plucked every year, in order to have their down for court-use. Into this river Thames there sets also a tide of the sea, which accordingly every six hours flows up and down. We then sailed towards London. Upon the left-hand side of the river we passed the beautiful and pleasant royal Palace of Greenwich, where the Queen moreover is usually accustomed to receive and to give audience to envoys and ambassadors from foreign potentates. 

11 August 1592
London is a large, excellent, and mighty city of business, and the most important in the whole kingdom; most of the inhabitants are employed in buying and selling merchandize, and trading in almost every corner of the world, since the river is most useful and convenient for this purpose, considering that ships from France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Hamburg, and other kingdoms, come almost up to the city, to which they convey goods and receive and take away others in exchange. 

It is a very populous city, so that one can scarcely pass along the streets, on account of the throng. 

The inhabitants are magnificently apparelled, and are extremely proud and overbearing; and because the greater part, especially the tradespeople, seldom go into other countries, but always remain in their houses in the city attending to their business, they care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them; and moreover one dare not oppose them, else the street-boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to the right and left unmercifully without regard to person; and because they are the strongest, one is obliged to put up with the insult as well as the injury. 

Velvet clothes but no bread
The women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other place; they also know well how to make use of it, for they go dressed out in exceedingly fine clothes, and give all their attention to their ruffs and stuffs, to such a degree indeed, that, as I am informed, many a one does not hesitate to wear velvet in the streets, which is common with them, whilst at home perhaps they have not a piece of dry bread. All the English women are accustomed to wear hats upon their heads, and gowns cut after the old German fashion - for indeed their descent is from the Saxons.

In the city there is among others a large and remarkable church, called St Paul’s, where there are two choirs or churches, one over the other, but otherwise there is nothing of importance to be seen in it. There are also many other churches here and there; in particular three, where they preach in the French, Italian, and Dutch tongues. 

The Exchange (La Burce) is a palace, where all kinds of beautiful goods are usually to be found; and because the city is very large and populous, the merchants who transact business together appoint to meet each other at that place, of whom several hundreds are constantly to be met with congregated there.

The sweet water is preserved in various parts of the city in large well-built stone cisterns, to be drawn off by cocks; and the poor labourers carry it on their shoulders to the different houses and sell it, in a peculiar kind of wooden vessels, broad at the bottom, but very narrow at the top, and bound with iron hoops.

Thirty-four heads on London Bridge
13 August 1592
Over the river at London there is a beautiful long bridge, with quite splendid, handsome, and well-built houses, which are occupied by merchants of consequence. Upon one of the towers, nearly in the middle of the bridge, are stuck up about thirty-four heads of persons of distinction, who had in former times been condemned and beheaded for creating riots and from other causes. [This practice of dipping the heads of executed men in tar and displaying them on pikes had been going on since the 14th century and would not stop until the mid-17th century.]

14 August 1592
His Highness and suite went in wherries [gondolas] to the beautiful and large royal church called Westminster, situated at the end, outside the city. In order to inspect the same. It is a very large structure, and in particular has a chapel within it which was built eighty years ago by King Henry VII, arched over with carved stone, so elegantly wrought that its equal is not easily to be found: there are inside some beautiful tombs of deceased Kings and Queens, covered all over with gilding, and executed in a most beautiful manner.

In front of this chapel, outside in the choir, are many other monuments of Kings made of marble, of all kinds of curious colours; [ . . .] In this choir stands also the chair in which, for several centuries past, all the Kings and Queens have been crowned: underneath lies a large stone, which is said to be the very one upon which the patriarch Jacob reposed when he saw the angels ascending and descending a ladder reaching to heaven. In the same choir was also shown the sword which King Edward III is said to have carried and used in battle and war; it is an immense blade, like a double-handed sword, so heavy that one can scarcely lift it. [. . .] In this beautiful church the English Ministers, who are dressed in white surplices such as the Papists wear, sang alternatively, and the organ played.

The most magnificent royal palace 
21 August 1592
In the afternoon his Highness was conducted to see the grand and truly beautiful royal Palace called Hampton Court. 

Now this is the most splendid and most magnificent royal Palace of any that may be found in England - or, indeed, in any other kingdom. It comprises ten different large courts, and as many separate royal or princely residences, but all connected; together with many beautiful gardens both for pleasure and ornament - some planted with nothing but rosemary; others laid out with various other plants, which are trained, intertwined, and trimmed in so wonderful a manner, and in such extraordinary shapes, that the like could not easily be found. In short, all the apartments and rooms in this immensely large structure are hung with rich tapestry, of pure gold and fine silk, so exceedingly beautiful and royally ornamented that it would hardly be possible to find more magnificent things of the kind in any other place. In particular, there is one apartment belonging to the Queen, in which she is accustomed to sit in state, costly beyond everything; the tapestries are garnished with gold, pearls, and precious stones - one tablecover alone is valued at above fifty thousand crowns - not to mention the royal throne, which is studded with very large diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and the like, that glitter among other precious stones and pearls as the sun among the stars. 

Many of the splendid large rooms are embellished with masterly paintings, writing-tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, organs, and musical instruments, which her Majesty is particularly fond of. Among other things to be seen there, are life-like portraits of the wild man and woman whom Martin Forbisser the English captain, took in his voyage to the New World, and brought alive to England. 

In the middle of the first and principal court stands a splendid high and massy fountain, with an ingenious water-work, by which you can, if you like, make the water play upon the ladies and others who are standing by, and give them a thorough wetting. 

The baiting of bulls and bears
1 September 1592
His Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each in a separate kennel. In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire, two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you can perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the horns of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, that one is obliged to pull them back by the tails, and force open their jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they, however, could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived to ward off their attacks that they could not well get at him; on the contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by striking and butting at them. 

A veritable torrent of accusation

‘This afternoon, I was brought to a hearing. This was done before a captain wearing the insignia of a former noncom, and the look of a decent Bavarian petit bourgeois (he could have been a clerk behind a post-office counter, or in a busy law office). Still, when I declared that what had brought me here was foul denunciation, the machinations of a low intriguer, these attractive features contorted and he blared at me like a tuba. I waited until all this lung power was exhausted, and then, looking him earnestly in the eyes, ventured that at the moment a defenceless man stood there before him - with emphasis on at the moment. Then there flooded down on my head a veritable torrent of accusation.’ This is from the very last entry in the diary of Friedrich Reck, a German writer born 140 years ago today. He was fiercely opposed to Hitler, and within three months of this diary entry he would be deported to Dachau, and then executed.

Reck was born on 11 August 1884 in Masuria (Maleczewo, Poland), the son of a Prussian politician and landowner. He studied medicine in Innsbruck for a while, and spent a year as a ship’s doctor. He served as an officer in the Prussian Army though was dismissed due to a diagnosis of diabetes. He married Anna Louise Büttner in 1908. They had three daughters and a son (before divorcing in 1930). He graduated in 1911, and moved to Stuttgart to become a journalist and theatre critic for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and then to Pasing near Munich in 1914.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Reck was a novelist, mainly of children’s adventure stories. In 1933, he converted to Catholicism, and in 1935 he married Irmgard von Borcke, with whom he had three more daughters. In 1937, he published a historical novel on the Münster rebellion, Bockelson: History of a Mass Delusion, which is today seen as a critical allegory of Hitler and Nazism. However, his books began to be banned by the Nazis, and many were not published until years after his death. In October 1944, he was arrested, and subsequently released, only to be re-arrested in December and charged with ‘insulting the German currency’. A few weeks later he was transferred to Dachau, and, in February, he was shot dead. Further information is available from Wikipedia.

Today, Reck is best remembered for his journal. It was published for the first time in German in 1947, republished in English translation in 1970, and reissued by New York Review Books in 2013. Diary of a Man in Despair contains thirty-nine dated entries covering the period from May 1936 to October 1944, most of them are several or many pages long. The diary has its own Wikipedia page, and is available to read via a digital loan at Internet Archive. 

Nicolas Lezard in The Guardian has this assessment: ‘Reck can come across as a snob at times, but the prose is so good, and the judgments so astute - when he speculates about the future he is often right - that his position makes sense. His thoughts on Christianity are also worth paying attention to, whether you are religious or not. It is also pleasing to note that there was not a trace of antisemitism in him, and he foresaw that the Nazis’ attitudes to the Jews would one day bring the country to its doom. Meanwhile he dreams up names for Hitler – “the middle-class Antichrist” or “the Machiavelli for chambermaids” - and rails against the Prussian mindset which allowed such a man to thrive. He even castigates the officers behind the July 1944 assassination attempt - despite his wish that it had succeeded - for having hitherto betrayed both the republic and the monarchy, which is an original position. This is one of the most important personal documents to have come out of the war.’

The following extract is taken from the very last entry in the published diary.

14 October 1944
‘All that was entailed, supposedly, was a single night at a hotel, and so I had come with just a small valise. They searched it for weapons: It was not a good beginning. And when I asked for a lawyer, the response was harsh.

Soon I was in a cell, and standing (against regulations) on the plank bed could see out into the perfect autumn day. The right to be out in that perfection had been taken from me, stolen as surely as they have stolen from us those years that were the First World War, and those of the years of inflation of the Twenties, and the Hitler-years - a quarter of a century, the best of a man’s life - robbed by these militarist maniacs.

Across the caserne yard in the officers’ quarters, moving from room to room behind the cheap curtains considered elegant these days was a blond of the new officer breed, very likely yesterday a lavatory attendant into whose hand (the same hand which had just been clearing away various blockages and encumbrances) you slipped two marks. They have come up, these people, as far as we have gone down these last twelve years; obviously, since it is our money which has raised them up. The little schizophrenic who is their leader had nothing and was nothing, but from 1918 those like him in their rage began to puff him up into what he has become. What an Augean stable that will be, the one they leave for us to clean up!

Now they’re marching on the parade-ground. I hear this from morning to night, the latest in military marches, snappy little melodics bellowed by a leader sheep, shouted back by his flock of 250. Shattering, these idiotic songs, these faces, this spiritual castration-by-propaganda. They march and rumble past - here, five men attached to one machine, there, a lumbering behemoth belching clouds of stinking gas with ten aboard, then another new mechanical monster with another five. What do these iron-plated apparitions have to do with soldiers? Better take the regimental insignia off their uniforms, and sew on instead gold-threaded representations of screwdrivers, or oil cans!

I want to be clear: I come from a long line of soldiers. At seventeen, on a horse behind the silver kettle-drums, that is exactly what I felt myself to be - a soldier. But the coming of the machine gun and the four-cylinder engine has raised a question, and that is, does the profession of soldier still exist, any more than that of statesman, or king, or poet or intellectual - supplanted as these have been by surrogates - so that all that’s left among the traditional professions is that of licensed whore. (And even the public whore is close to being regulated out of existence, with the woman being required twice each session, at foreplay and at climax, to shout a politically knowledgeable ‘Heil Hitler!’) As for me, I can see myself ending as a pacifist . . . not because I set that much store by the inherently fragile artifacts of this world; no, because I want to officiate at the funeral of a damnable lie - the lie that the concept of ‘soldier’ can be infinitely further perverted!

This afternoon, I was brought to a hearing. This was done before a captain wearing the insignia of a former noncom, and the look of a decent Bavarian petit bourgeois (he could have been a clerk behind a post-office counter, or in a busy law office). Still, when I declared that what had brought me here was foul denunciation, the machinations of a low intriguer, these attractive features contorted and he blared at me like a tuba. I waited until all this lung power was exhausted, and then, looking him earnestly in the eyes, ventured that at the moment a defenceless man stood there before him - with emphasis on at the moment.

Then there flooded down on my head a veritable torrent of accusation:
- I had falsely stated my rank (to which I responded that in the course of my life I had waded in too much blood to give undue importance to rank).
- That in the course of my earlier admission of wrongdoing, I had made light of the People’s Militia. With my statement before me, I proceeded to show that the very opposite was the case.
- That I had organised a demonstration of women protesting against the removal of crucifixes from public buildings, did not say ‘Heil Hitler’ when I should have, and downplayed the value of the German currency.

I answered with a question: was I being questioned here under military or Party auspices? Also, in the matter of the currency charge, could I get further details?

This was not a fruitful approach. What followed was a torrent of invective that burst over me like burning lava, covering all argument, all protest. I was silent. They took me away.

But I was not to get off so lightly. They called in the major, and when I saw him I knew: only a Higher Power could save me now. He was an apparition, a man-doll, a frightful stumbling puppet smashed by shot and shell and put together with prostheses. Nothing worked naturally, nothing was normal - the man was a mechanical horror. And in the eyes, that sadism. . .’

Most somber events

‘For weeks I have been tormented by witnessing these most somber events of our century (and perhaps of my whole life); it enrages me to belong to a nation that is so powerless today. . . There are moments - when one reflects upon Hitler’s flag flying over the Acropolis - of doubt that we shall ever see the victory so longed for by all free spirits. Yet there have been centuries in history when evil triumphed, when independent thinking was asleep, when moral and material progress were halted. So it is possible that Europe is now on the eve of such an age of obscurantism and misery.’ This is from the chilling diary of Raymond-Raoul Lambert, born 130 years ago today,  a prominent Jewish leader during the Vichy regime. 

Lambert was born on 10 August 1894 in Montmorency, near Paris. He fought in WWI (and later in WW2). During the 1930s, he participated in several organisations helping refugees leaving Germany, and acted as secretary-general of the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés, becoming chief editor of Univers Israélite. In 1941 he was nominated director-general of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) in the then unoccupied zone. Subsequently, he became chief of UGIF for the whole of France. 

Despite his official roles, Lambert clandestinely connected with Jewish underground resistance groups and Catholic circles that assisted Jews in evading persecution. His resistance activities included protesting against the confiscation of Jewish property by the Nazis. In August 1943, Lambert and his family - wife Simone Lambert and four children - were arrested and deported to Auschwitz where they were gassed on arrival. A little further information on Lambert’s life is available at Encyclopaedia.com.

However a more comprehensive source is the published diary of Lambert himself: Diary of a Witness 1940-1943, as translated from the French by Isabel Best, and as edited by Richard I. Cohen (published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, in association with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1985). This can be read freely online at Internet Archive (with log-in), and a review can be read in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Oxford Academic. NB: Lambert is known to have kept diaries during earlier periods of his life but these seem to have been lost.

According to the publisher at the time of publication, Lambert’s diary had been among the most important untranslated records of the experience of French Jews in the Holocaust. Lambert, was, in the words of the historian Michael Marrus, ‘arguably the most important Jewish official in contact with the Vichy government and the Germans.’ National Catholic Reporter says: ‘Lambert was a complex and flawed man who was asked to take on grave responsibilities. His decisions have been, and will be, judged by history, but readers of [his diary] will emerge with respect for his courage in wrestling with the idolatry of loyalty as the reality of the Vichy regime undermines the “humane culture” of France.’

The editor of the diary, Best, states: ‘Lambert has left behind a candid, humane document of a man who firmly believed in a vision of service to his country and his co-religionists. A man of letters and action, his diary illuminates the destiny of a French Jew who struggled to make sense of a dramatically changing world while he held firm to the legacy of 150 years of emancipation.’

Here is another extract from the Best’s introduction followed by several extracts from the diary itself.

‘Written by a man who from his youth was actively engaged in the affairs of his country and the destiny of his co-religionists, the diary has no humor or levity, maintaining throughout a rhythm of seriousness and intensity. It transmits Lambert’s internal conflict and struggle to understand how his vision of France could withstand the ideological revolution of Vichy, and evokes his pain and revulsion at efforts to turn the Jews into pariahs of the society he so cherished. The diary also captures Lambert’s inability to accept this new status as it reveals his deep attachment to French literature and traditions, to the writings of Stendhal, Romain Rolland, André Gide, Maurice Barres, and so many others. Indeed, his world of associations and cultural habits was shaped almost exclusively by French writers and thinkers and only minimally by Jewish sources. Yet he felt a continuing sense of loyalty to and identification with both worlds and failed to see any point of conflict between them. Suddenly confronted with the French about-face, Lambert was left reeling and searching for answers. Thus the relatively minor role the Nazis play in his diary. For him the shattered universe he confronts is that of the historic relationship between France and French Jewry, nurtured over generations and sealed in endless forms of dedication to the common cause. Diary of a Witness is riveted with these preoccupations, making it a seminal document for the study of French Jewry in modern times in general and during the Holocaust in particular.’

12 July 1940
‘After the past four weeks, which have seen unfold the most tragic events in our history, and for me the most terrible anxieties I have ever known, I am trying to recover my intellectual balance, to regain my awareness of the passage of time. So naturally I thought of the notebooks, which, during the Great War, saved me from inertia and despair.

As an officer assigned to a central administrative unit, I was not directly involved in the fighting, but I have witnessed the disarray and paralysis of my country’s central nervous systems. I have been most dreadfully worried about the fate of my wife and our three sons, who are my whole life and my only reasons now to go on living and struggling - for even though the real danger is gone, at least for the moment, the future will bring serious problems.

I should begin by putting down matter-of-factly, as well as I can remember clearly, the details of my odyssey from Paris to Nîmes; as I owed it to myself to be during that time, I am aware of having been lucid, energetic, and concerned to do my duty. 

Until June 10: Still in the technical section of the Colonial Troops, captain tor a month now (and very happy about it), stationed at the Hotel des Invalides. On May 19 I decided to have Simone and the children evacuated to Bellac, more because ot the danger of air raids than the strategic situation. Left alone in Paris, I waited. Several alarms.

Monday, June 3: At 1:30 P.M., aerial bombardment of Paris, targeting the Citroën factory, which was hit; some bombs in my Auteuil neighborhood, in Coussin Street where Lionel has been going to school. . . So the evacuation is justified and I accept the separation. One official statement after another announces disaster in overly enigmatic terms.

June 10: At 11 a.m. I go with my superior, Commandant Pascot, to the Eighth Department office of the ministry under which we work. . .  They are moving out, without letting us know. They were just going to forget about us. The General Headquarters staff has already left Paris, during the night. Destination: Candé, near Blois. It’s up to us to find transportation: a dump truck belonging to one of my noncommissioned officers -he deals in fertilizer; the cars of two of our secretaries. The commandant goes to Ribérac this evening to kiss his wife, then catch up with us at Candé. I am to leave in the morning with the office things and the files.

By evening Paris is emptying out, its public buildings are dead. The winds of defeat are already blowing. At street corners women sit on bundles, waiting for the taxis, all of which are gone. At St. Lazare train station, floods of refugees. “They” have reached Pontoise and Nantes. I go on calmly arranging our departure. We [are to] meet at 8:30 A.M., unless there are suspicious noises during the night.

June 11: I awake to one of the most horrible sensations of my life, a feeling of being smothered, of dying all alone. The maid rouses me at 6 A.M.: gas attack! I open the window. Paris is drowning in a black, stifling fog that is plunging the sky and the streets into mourning. . . It smells of oil and soot, but it’s not a gas attack. It is oil fumes from the storage tanks that have been set on fire from Rouen to Bonnières, along with smoke with which the Boche [the Germans] are screening their crossing of the Seine. . . It feels like being crushed by something sinister, and I truly sense that Paris will never be the same again. This deep gloom is our defeat. In the street people's faces have black spots from the soot and eyes outlined in black. The few souls still passing by are running like crazy toward the train stations.

We leave Invalides at 10:30. I requisition gasoline from the military school. We head for Candé by the Orleans highway, which I know well. . . The spectacle there is dumbfounding, a whole people in flight. The road is hopelessly jammed: workers fleeing on bicycles, on foot, pushing wheelbarrows, cars full to bursting. . . With my lieutenant I go ahead on foot to restore some order and make a way through, but there are no longer any police or any authority that people recognize, and of course no priority possible for the military either. Lunch is in a ditch where we are forced to wait for an hour coming out of Longjumeau. By evening we are at Étampes. My second-in-command and my men sleep in the vehicles, which I have parked off the highway on a dead-end road, since it would be dangerous to keep going at night. I take the responsibility for this; we will get there when we can, and we are more than seventy kilometers [forty-five miles] beyond the enemy’s reach on the ground. For myself, in a nearby house I am able to find a free bed on which to stretch out. My experience of the previous war is serving me well; the filling station on the square in Étampes is overwhelmed but is obliged to give me gasoline to continue my journey. Senator Breton, traveling in his Bugatti, is sleeping in the open air, and there is no more bread to be found. . . I scrape together what I can for dinner with my men.’

2 October 1940
‘One of the most depressing memories of my life. This morning I read in the newspaper: “The Council of Ministers continued study and finalization of the Statut on the Jews. . .” So it is possible that within a few days I shall see my citizenship reduced, and that my sons, who are French by birth, culture, and faith, will find themselves brutally and cruelly cast out of the French community. . . Is this possible? I cannot believe it. France is no longer France. I repeat to myself that Germany is in charge here, trying still to excuse this offense against an entire history - but I cannot yet realize that it is true.’

9 October 1940
‘I am in Luchon on an assignment for the refugee committee, since I have again taken up social work in order to earn my children’s daily bread.

Here I found about a thousand unfortunate Jews from Holland and Belgium, in poverty and anguish, but the future for them looks even more fearful than the present.

The papers this morning published the decree, signed by Pétain, that has abrogated the Crémieux Decree. The Jews of Algeria are no longer French citizens. . . The Marshal has dishonored himself. What shame and what infamy! In Algeria a father who lost his son in the war is no longer a French citizen, because he is Jewish. . . So this is the armistice with honor. I am incapable of realizing that such an injustice is done, I am so ashamed of my country. Ah! if I didn’t have a wife, three sons, and graves to care for on this soil that is still French, how well I would know the way to action, to revolt and struggle for what makes life precious!’

10 May 1941
‘For weeks I have been tormented by witnessing these most somber events of our century (and perhaps of my whole life); it enrages me to belong to a nation that is so powerless today. . . There are moments - when one reflects upon Hitler’s flag flying over the Acropolis - of doubt that we shall ever see the victory so longed for by all free spirits. Yet there have been centuries in history when evil triumphed, when independent thinking was asleep, when moral and material progress were halted. So it is possible that Europe is now on the eve of such an age of obscurantism and misery. It seems that nothing on land is capable of standing up to the mechanized strength of the Reich. What then? The decision will only come on the sea or in the air, when the time comes that the United States and the British Empire can bombard the industrial centers of central Europe, day and night, until its peoples beg for mercy. I don’t see any such possibility for at least two years. And I tell myself, without being pessimistic, that it is not an absolute certainty.

The old world will not be reborn. Perhaps the victory of the evil forces will give birth, after a long time, to a new world. Can the tiny cell that my family represents survive that long, in the midst of chaos?

So I fear for the future of my children, and my fears are particularly those of a Frenchman, a French Jew. Fortunately my sons are not yet adults. What means should they be given to defend themselves in four or five years? I accept this suffering for myself, because I hope in spite of all to sec the dawn of freedom once again, but for them - I don’t want them to suffer, and I just assume they will not face debasement and discrimination. It’s a problem - such grievous cruelty that I refuse to be resigned to it for the moment. I’m either an optimist or a coward.

In view of the persecutions being initiated by the new order in France, against foreigners in general and foreign Jews in particular, in light of what has happened elsewhere, in view of racist laws and the “Commission on Jewish Affairs” being run in Vichy from Berlin, I wonder whether this collaboration won’t bring about a yet more rigorous Statut. A history of racism in France from 1939 to 194? will have to be written. . . There are days when I don’t dare listen to the official bulletins on the radio; they wound me, because I still feel French and call myself a Frenchman. If I didn't have my wife and my three sons, I should be sorry not to have “died honorably in action,” or sorry to have survived my mother.’

The drama of London in WWI

‘[Sir Edward] Grey [Foreign Secretary] on rising got a prolonged cheer from both sides of the House, and he stood at the Table - tall and erect in his light summer suit - until the applause had subsided and the House settled down silently to listen. He spoke in a steady, even, passionless voice. It was a plain statement of the events that had led to the crisis, to which the tremendous issue - Peace or War? - imparted a solemn seriousness. Nor was he long in coming to the point. Great Britain was pledged to maintain the integrity of Belgium under the Treaty signed by the Powers in 1839. [. . .] If there was to be a war, he said, Great Britain would suffer terribly. But if we were to stand aside it would mean the loss of our self-respect, and at the end of the War, we should find ourselves powerless to prevent Europe falling under the domination of one Power, to our undoing.’

This is from the diary of Michael Macdonagh, at the time a reporter for The Times, writing in his diary on 3 August 1914, 110 years ago today, the day before Britain declared war on Germany. 

For me, Macdonagh’s diary is one of the most interesting of First World War diaries: not only is it charmingly written from beginning to end, but it is hugely informative too, since Macdonagh was reporting daily from the streets of London and was present at important political events. Here is the chapter on Michael Macdonagh from London in Diaries (see The Diary Review article for more about this unpublished book).

Michael Macdonagh reporting the drama of life

‘I think I can claim to have seen everything of importance bearing on the War for good or evil that happened in London during those eventual four and a half years, when the War was part of the texture of London’s life, domestic and public.’ This is Michael Macdonagh, an Irish-born journalist who worked on The Times for many years, introducing the published version of a diary he kept during the First World War. Not only is it charmingly written from beginning to end, but it is hugely informative too, since Macdonagh is present at important political events, in Parliament or at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, and out on the street reporting faithfully what he sees, hears and feels.

Macdonagh was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1860. He became a reporter on a local paper before moving to Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, where he worked for eight years as a special correspondent in Ireland and in the Houses of Parliament. He married Mary in 1888, and they had one son. In 1894, he moved to London and joined the staff of The Times. He authored many books, about Ireland, the Houses of Parliament and topical history subjects (such as Irish Life and Character; The Reporters’ Gallery; and Daniel O’Connell and the story of Catholic emancipation). He died in 1946.

It was not until he had retired from active journalism, that Macdonagh published In London During the Great War: The diary of a journalist (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1935). A newspaper reporter, he said, ‘is brought into hardly less varied and intimate degrees of relationship than physician or priest or magistrate with the World, the Flesh and the Devil - vocationally, of course.’ And, indeed, the published diary goes some way to justify this claim, for Macdonagh seems to have been everywhere, with the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, talking to commuters on trams, observing unofficial recruiters with their white feathers, helping three girls locked out of a tube station, or by Big Ben proclaiming the start and the end of war.

‘The theme of my book,’ Macdonagh wrote in his introduction, ‘is the drama of the life of the greatest civil community of the world in its direct relation to the Great War - London with its population of eight millions. It was the headquarters of the organising statesmanship and the executive military administration of the War on the British side, and on the American, when the United States joined the Allies. Accordingly things occurred in London during the Great War of a kind hitherto unknown in history. For the first time in warfare the civil population of a belligerent country were treated by the enemy as combatants, and - what was unthought of at the outbreak of hostilities - were bombed from the air by flying engines of war.’

Day of words, day of action
3 August 1914
[Sir Edward] Grey [Foreign Secretary] on rising got a prolonged cheer from both sides of the House, and he stood at the Table - tall and erect in his light summer suit - until the applause had subsided and the House settled down silently to listen. He spoke in a steady, even, passionless voice. It was a plain statement of the events that had led to the crisis, to which the tremendous issue - Peace or War? - imparted a solemn seriousness. Nor was he long in coming to the point. Great Britain was pledged to maintain the integrity of Belgium under the Treaty signed by the Powers in 1839. [. . .] If there was to be a war, he said, Great Britain would suffer terribly. But if we were to stand aside it would mean the loss of our self-respect, and at the end of the War, we should find ourselves powerless to prevent Europe falling under the domination of one Power, to our undoing.

4 August 1914
To-day is the day of days. It is a day of action, in contra-distinction to yesterday, which was a day of words. What counts with militaristic Germany is deeds not words. She has paid no attention to Sir Edward Grey’s speech. [. . .] [Prime Minister Herbert] Asquith stood at the Bar holding up another document. “A message from His Majesty signed by his own hand,” said he. At the words, all Members uncovered and the Speaker rose from his Chair. The Prime Minister then walked up the floor to the Table and handed the paper to the Speaker, who read the message to the House. It was a proclamation of the mobilisation of the entire Army. The Navy is already mobilised. This also was received in silence: a wonderful example of restraint and seriousness. Thus it can be said that the House of Commons declared war in no mood either of national vainglory or racial animosity. [. . .]

Men in straw hats, girls in calico dresses
It was in the streets after the House of Commons had adjourned that I found myself in an atmosphere of real passion. Parliament Street and Whitehall were thronged with people highly excited and rather boisterous. A brilliant sun shone in a cloudless sky. Young men in straw hats were in the majority. Girls in light calico dresses were numerous. All were already touched with the war fever. They regarded their country as a crusader - redressing all wrongs and bringing freedom to oppressed nations. Cries of “Down with Germany!” were raised. Germany was the aggressor. She must be made to ask humbly for peace. The singing of patriotic songs, such as “Rule Britannia,” “The Red White and Blue,” and also “The Marseillaise,” brought the crowds still closer together in national companionship. They saw England radiant through the centuries, valiant and invincible, and felt assured that so she shall appear for ever.

There were opponents, of course. Making my way through the crowds to Trafalgar Square, I found two rival demonstrations in progress under Nelson’s Pillar - on one side of the plinth for war, and on the other against! The rival crowds glared at each other. [. . .] I looked up at the effigy of Nelson - “sailing the sky with one arm and one eye” to see whether in imagination I could notice any change in his attittude. But no! He was still gazing steadily in a south-easterly direction - towards France, the enemy! - as he had been placed on his pillar some eighty years ago.

Suddenly, amidst the cheering and booing, a cry was raised, “The King! The King! On to Buckingham Palace!” [. . .] At Buckingham Palace the crowd sang “God Save the King” with tremendous fervour. His Majesty came out on to the balcony overlooking the forecourt, wearing the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. [. . .] He had to appear on the balcony three separate times during the evening, because of the chanting of the crowd, slowly and with emphasis, betokening that they would have no refusal. [. . .]

From the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament came the light and gladsome chimes of the four quarters [. . .] then followed the slow and measured strokes of Big Ben proclaiming to London that it was eleven o’clock. We listened in silence.

5 August 1914
“Britain at War!” So London is informed this morning in bold black letters on the placard of The Times. In the House of Commons to-day, Asquith made officially the inevitable announcement. “Since eleven o’clock last night a state of war has existed between Germany and this country.”

Your King and Country need YOU
6 August 1914
The first appeal for recruits on the walls of London to-day. It is printed in national colours. Within a deep red border, in vivid blue letters on a white background, are the words, “Your King and Country need You” - “YOU” being heavily underscored. [. . .] Lord Kitchener, who has been appointed Secretary of State for War, is confident “that this appeal will be at once responded to by all those who have the safety of our Empire at heart.” [. . .] The recruiting headquarters is in Old Scotland Yard, off Whitehall. As I passed there this evening I saw a big throng of young men still in straw hats, waiting their turn to get and, in the old phrase, “take the King’s shilling.”

31 August 1914
There is to be seen almost every day at Victoria railway station the arrival of parties of Belgians who are pouring into England in tens of thousands, torn from their homes and flying before the devastating advance of the Germans: a spectacle unparalleled, perhaps, since the flight to this country of the French Huguenots [. . .].

11 September 1914
The lights of London were lowered last night for the first time. [. . .] Only a few of the street lamps were alight, and these had shades. Lights in shop windows were reduced. Blinds must be drawn before lights are lit in upper windows of all houses.

As I was going home from the Houses of Parliament last night I could not read my evening paper, so dim was the lighting of the Clapham train. The car was also specially fitted with blinds, and before we crossed Westminster Bridge these were drawn by the conductor for the purpose, he explained to us, of disguising the course of the river from hostile airmen, should they attempt a raid on London

Two workingmen in the car were very contemptuous of the Zeppelins. “They could never get here,” said one. “I hope they will come,” said the other. “We’ll stick pins in their bloody gas-bags.”

31 December 1914
As I write, there is a sudden uproar outside; bells are ringing; railway locomotives at Clapham Junction are shrieking and cock-crowing; from the river comes the wailing of sirens; factories are sounding their hooters. People are rushing from their houses into the streets and roads shouting and shaking hands. It is twelve o’clock - midnight: 1915 is being hailed as a deliverer.

The largest arsenal in the world
2 April 1915
I was tremendously impressed as I was being conducted through the Arsenal, covering three and a half miles long by one mile broad - the largest place of the kind, I was told, in the world - and saw those vast throngs of workers, men and women, absorbed in the making of all sorts of war materials. It is the first time the Arsenal in its long history as been open on Good Friday. Work never ceases now, night or day, Sunday or weekday. There are night and day shifts of ten and fourteen hours each. The workers are allowed the relief of just a Sunday off every fortnight.

13 April 1915
I went to the Horticultural Hall, Westminster, to-day to see the annual Daffodil Show.[. . .] [There was] a new specimen, called “Lord Kitchener” and described by the exhibitor as a “a bold, well-balanced flower, a tall grower.” It looked it - like the War Minister - every inch of it! [. . .]

But what is this? The mess of war is being introduced into that gem of our public parks, St James’s!  . . . The lake of the Park has been emptied since August. It was feared it might provide air-raiders with a landmark, or rather a “watermark,” at night [. . .].

13 May 1915
There is a scarcity of bread in parts of the East End of London where German bakers have been rooted out by the process of their shops being pillaged and wrecked. I am told that other premises were attacked by the mobs because of incorrect assumptions as to the nationality of the names over the doors. For instance, a publican named “Strachan” - an old Scottish name - was taken to be a German and had his windows smashed.

Women offer to make war materials
17 July 1915
For the first time since the outbreak of the War the streets of London were brightened to-day with colour and beauty. It was a dramatic and very moving procession of women through the West End offering Lloyd George, who has been appointed to the specially created office of Minister of Munitions in the National Government, the help of women in the making of war materials and other forms of national work. The organisers were Mrs Pankhurst and the other ladies who were prominent in the late Suffragette agitation - that militant movement for the franchise in which women displayed such amazing audacity, resourcefulness and exuberance.

2 October 1915
Explosions and counter-explosions of the agitation for and against conscription are being heard daily in London. [. . .] Meanwhile, nothing is being left undone to keep voluntary recruiting alive. To-day there was a “monster recruiting rally,” in which five columns of Regulars and Territorials, each twelve hundred strong, started from five different centres [. . .]. I accompanied one of the columns on its entire march through the City, along Holborn and Oxford Street, and up Tottenham Court Road to Camden Town. “Wake up, London!” was the motto of the rally. It certainly caused a great stir everywhere. In its widespread influence it was the most remarkable recruiting demonstration that London has ever seen.

6 October 1915
New but unofficial recruiters have appeared on the scene. These are the young women who have formed what they call the “Order of the White Feather,” which they publicly and forcibly confer upon any young man in “civies” whom they come upon anywhere, and whom they think should be in khaki. [. . .] Going home in a tramcar the other night I was a witness of the presentation of white feathers. The victims were two young men who were rudely disturbed form their reading of the evening paper by the attack of three young women. “Why don’t you fellows enlist? Your King and Country want you. We don’t.” One of the girls was a pretty wench. She dishonoured one of the young men, as she thought, by sticking a white feather in his buttonhole, and a look of contempt spoiled for a moment her lovely face.

Zeppelins, Zeppelins!
13 October 1915
I was in the Reporter’s Gallery, House of Commons, at half past nine o’clock this evening when the debate on the second reading of the Finance Bill was interrupted by the noise of explosions which came in through the open windows of the Chamber. A low cry of “Zeppelins! Zeppelins!” passed round, and immediately there was a rush of Members and journalists out into New Palace Yard, where they were joined by several Peers from the House of Lords. [. . .] In a southerly direction, over the Thames, I could see a long, black object so high up that it seemed to be moving among the stars. For a few minutes the airship, crossing the Thames in a north-easterly course and passing almost directly over New Palace Yard, was then played upon by two search-lights, and in their radiance she looked a thing of silvery beauty sailing serenely through the night, indifferent to the big gun roaring at her from the Green Park, whose shells seem to burst just below her. In a minute she disappeared from our view behind the houses, and immediately there broke upon our ears a frightful grinding roar, followed by what sounded like a disruptive explosion. Then another, and another, and another, in quick succession. The thing of beauty had transformed herself into a hellish monster, and was pouring fire and death upon the crowded streets.

14 October 1915
The official account of the raid in the papers this morning issued by the Press Bureau is very brief. It says a Zeppelin visited “a London district”; that thirty-eight persons were killed and eighty-seven injured, and that but little damage was done to property. [. . .] I went out to see for myself what had actually happened. [. . .] Had the bombs fallen on the Lyceum, the Strand and the Aldwych Theatres - and each was missed by only a few yards - frightful massacres would have occurred. [. . .] All the killed and wounded in the raid were people who had been taken unawares in the street. No public warning of the coming of the Zeppelin was given. The raider was determined to mark his flight across London with fire and carnage. He dropped about twenty explosive and incendiary bombs, all within five minutes and nearly all in central London. [. . .]

When I got home after my explorations my wife had a good story to tell me. She had been discussing the raid with our charwoman, Annie Bolster of Battersea. “Isn’t it an extraordinary thing, Annie,” said my wife, “that the Zeppelins, great ships like Atlantic liners, should be able to sail through the air from Germany to London and back?” “Don’t you believe it, ma’am,” Annie replied. “Don’t you believe it. We know in Battersea that these ’ere Zeppelins are hidden away in the back-yards of German bakers!”

Alexandra Palace internment camp
28 December 1915
To-day I visited Alexandra Palace, those extensive buildings and grounds in North London, where close on a thousand civilian prisoners of war, males of military age, are interned. They are German subjects who lived and carried on their avocations in London [. . .] waiters, barbers, cooks, bakers and tailors. There are also several who held responsible positions as hotel managers and commercial agents.

14 July 1916
The fine equestrian statue of Charles I at Charing Cross, close to Trafalgar Square stands on the very spot where some of the regicides responsible for the King’s death in 1649 were hanged after the Restoration of Charles II, and the King looks down Whitehall to the scene of his execution, from which, as it were, he has triumphantly arisen. But he has temporarily disappeared from view. The statue is regarded as one of the finest in London, which is not saying much, so indifferent are the others. What is better to say is that it is the most romantic memorial in London. Now it is covered with sandbags and enclosed within hoardings to protect it from injury in the air raids. On a recent visit to Westminster Abbey I saw that the tombs of the Kings and Queens are almost hidden behind protective sandbags. The same precautions have been taken in other churches, and also in some of the Inns of Court. Old stained glass has been removed from several windows.

The drabness of civilians
7 August 1916
It occurred to me to go for a long walk through the main thoroughfares, starting from Whitehall, to see in what respects the daily life of London has been altered by two years of war, so far, at least, as change is to be observed in the streets. [. . .]

The Strand, into which I turn from Whitehall, is still the busiest and most animated street in London, but its aspect is changed - its traffic and pedestrianism being so very different from what they were in the days of peace. The omnibus service is restricted; the use of private motor-cars is discouraged; horse-drawn vehicles are far more numerous. Among the walkers on the pavements khaki is predominant. Soldiers are everywhere. The military hustle and bustle to be seen in Whitehall is purposeful, being concentrated on War service and administration. In the Strand there is military relaxation, and some indiscipline. Obviously the men are from the training camps, spending a day off in London. They have not the seriousness which mark most soldiers back from the trenches on furlough. They have the idle vacancy of sheep wandering on the hill-side. [. . .] 

The drabness of civilians is very noticeable! What shabbiness in dress! A remarkable change in the point of view regarding clothes has set in. The cause is to be found on the walls and hoardings. Recruiting posters have been replaced by economy posters. “Spend Less; Save More.” “Buy only War Savings Certificates.” Accordingly it is the mode to assume a studied air of personal untidiness. [. . .] The fashion among men of all classes is to wear hat, coat and trousers long - as long as possible, in time. The only short wear is the feminine skirt. [. . .]

Women are to be seen at work everywhere. “Men must fight and women must work - and weep.” You see them at the wheel of motor-cars and motor-drays. You see them handling the reins of horse-drawn vehicles. They are ticket-collectors at Underground and tube stations. At hotels and offices the lift-boy has become a lift-girl. The hall-porter at some of the big hotels is an Amazon in blue or mauve coat, gold-braided peaked cap and high top-boots - a gorgeous figure that fascinates me. But my favourite is the young “conductorette” on trams and buses, in her smart jacket, short skirts to the knees and leather leggings. [. . .]

Gone are the hurdy-gurdy men
One familiar with London of pre-War days cannot fail to be struck with the absence of music from the streets. All the itinerant musicians have disappeared. The first to go were the “German bands” who came here during the summer touring London, the provincial towns and the holiday resorts. The cornet-player who blew in brazen blasts the popular airs of the day at public house doors is gone. Gone, too, is the more numerous “hurdy-gurdy men.” I am told there were hundreds of these barrel-organs in constant use in 1914 hired by Italians in “Little Italy” off Gray’s Inn Road, and that not one has been taken out this year.

Hyde Park has two anti-aircraft guns screened in extensive hutments and a searchlight over the gates at Hyde Park Corner - but no flowers. The beds that used to be bright with the colours in masses of the daffodil, the hyacinth, the narcissus, the tulip, the geranium, the dahlia - all processionally in their due seasons - are grass-grown. The Office of Works, which has charge of the Royal Parks, has suspended gardening for the duration of the war.

The bringing down of a Zeppelin in flames
2 October 1916
I saw last night what is probably the most appalling spectacle associated with the war which London is likely to provide - the bringing down in flames of a raiding Zeppelin.

I was late at the office, and leaving it just before midnight was crossing to Blackfriars Bridge to get a tramcar home, when my attention was attracted by frenzied cries of “Oh! Oh! She's hit!” from some wayfarers who were standing in the middle of the road gazing at the sky in a northern direction. Looking up the clear run of New Bridge Street and Farringdon Road I saw high in the sky a concentrated blaze of searchlights, and in its centre a ruddy glow which rapidly spread into the outline of a blazing airship. Then the searchlights were turned off and the Zeppelin drifted perpendicularly in the darkened sky, a gigantic pyramid of flames, red and orange, like a ruined star falling slowly to earth. Its glare lit up the streets and gave a ruddy tint even to the waters of the Thames.

The spectacle lasted two or three minutes. It was so horribly fascinating that I felt spellbound - almost suffocated with emotion, ready hysterically to laugh or cry. When at last the doomed airship vanished from sight there arose a shout the like of which I never heard in London before - a hoarse shout of mingled execration, triumph and joy; a swelling shout that appeared to be rising from all parts of the metropolis, ever increasing in force and intensity. It was London’s Te Deum for another crowning deliverance. Four Zeppelins destroyed in a month!

War shrines and the National Kitchen Movement
13 November 1916
“War Shrines” are not to be seen in the more residential and crowded areas of central London. Usually the shrine is a decorated wooden tablet surmounted by a cross, put up at a street corner, and containing the names of those from the street who are serving in the Army or Navy, or have been killed in action. There is a ledge for a vase or flowers.

28 November 1916
West London was bombed from the air this morning by an aeroplane, and I never heard of it, like thousands of others, until I opened the evening paper. It is the first day-light raid, and the first raid by an aeroplane. People in the vicinity of Victoria railway station and Buckingham Palace, close on midday, were suddenly startled and pulled up two or three explosions which followed each other in quick succession. [. . .] The aeroplane having thus made history was brought down by the French on its return journey to its base. There were two naval officers on board with a large-scale map of London.

21 May 1917
I was present at the inauguration by the Queen and her daughter, Princess Mary, of the National Kitchen Movement by the opening of an experimental kitchen in the Westminster Bridge Road. The purpose of this movement, organised by the Ministry of Food, is to instruct the poorer classes how food, by proper cooking, can be made to yield the most nutrition with the least waste. The food cooked in the Westminster Kitchen was distributed by the Queen and Princess Mary to the poorer residents of the neighbourhood, women, girls and small boys who came in large numbers with bowls, dishes and plates. 

What a lot of aeroplanes - take cover
7 July 1917
The most daring air attack which the Germans have yet made on London took place this morning. It was also the most thrilling. The raiders came in twenty big aeroplanes. The weather was sunny and warm, and so low were the planes that they were seen from all parts of the metropolis by millions of people. Killed, 57; injured 193.

I was due at The Times office at eleven o’clock and my tram from Clapham had begun to cross Blackfriars Bridge when a woman on the upper deck of the tram, where she and I were the only passengers, aroused me from the book I was reading by calling out, “What a lot of aeroplanes!” I looked up and saw the fleet approaching from a north-easterly direction, and noticed, at the same time, how they were being intently watched by numbers of people on the bridge’s footways. “Are they Germans?” the woman asked me, with a note of anxiety in her voice. “Oh, no,” I replied, reassuringly, without any hesitation. “If they were Germans we should hear our guns firing at them. I feel sure they are our own airmen carrying out manoeuvres.” [. . .] 

I alighted from the tram at the north side of Blackfriars Bridge and was walking towards The Times office when I was startled by the sound of a gun. It was the first I had heard. It sounded like the boom of a tremendous drum from afar off. [ . . .] Then I heard the weird swish of a bomb as it plunged downwards through the air and the roaring, rending explosion of its fall. Instantly the scene in the streets was wholly transformed. The policeman standing near the monument of Queen Victoria worked himself into a state of excitement, shouting “Take cover! Take cover!” and wildly waving his arms. Everybody ran hither and thither for shelter. I joined in the rush for Blackfriars station of the Underground. We tumbled down the stairs to the platform of the trains going west, and ran along it to its end, some distance under the roadway. A second terrific explosion had given added swiftness to our feet. The girls of the Lyons’s and ABC teashops at the station were in our wake, some of them being helped down, screaming hysterically. [. . .] For about five minutes more we could hear the uproar of bombs and guns. The silence fell, and, ten minutes later, gathering our scattered senses, we concluded that it was safe to emerge from the tunnel into the streets.

Prime Minister absent from the Mayor’s Banquet
10 November 1917
At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last night, thinking of the many times I have attended it - every year since 1900, and off and on during the preceding ’nineties - and closely surveying the scene, it seemed to me that War which has changed so much has left this great civic, social and political event fundamentally unaffected and it remains what it has always been - a gathering of those eminent in Government, in diplomacy, in the fighting Services and in the Arts, set in the midst of a large company representative of the City’s municipal, commercial and financial life. [. . .]

For the first time in a hundred years and more the Prime Minister was absent from the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Lloyd George, the quick-silvered, is in Italy, where it is reported the Germans have routed the Italian Army in the northern part of the country, taking thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns. Bonar Law represented the Prime Minister at dinner. It did not concern the puritanical minded man whether the feast was bountiful or spare. To him a glass of water and a crust would have been enough, alone with himself. As I watched him in the Windsor uniform, seated to the right of the Lord Mayor, fingering nervously with the crumbs of bread on his plate, I thought how appropriately his face fitted the present dismal phase of the War - the pallid complexion, the sad eyes, the droop of the mouth.

Great Paul booming out for victory on the Western Front
23 November 1917
The joybells of the London churches to-day gave voice to the popular rejoicing at a great victory on the Western Front. It is the first time the peals have been rung since the outbreak of War. [. . .] I went up Ludgate Hill to hear St Paul’s carillon starting the City chimes at noon. This carillon is very rarely rung. It has not been heard since it celebrated the declaration of Peace after the South African War. There was a big crowd on the Cathedral steps and in the forecourt. After the clock had struck twelve, the big bell known as “Great Paul” - the bell that tolls for prayers - first boomed out, and was followed by the full peal of bells, twelve in number, which were a gift from the City Companies. The people cheered and cheered, exchanging greetings and smiles. The bells of the other churches, joining in with St Paul’s, helped to swell the wings of sound carrying the joyful news to offices, shops and warehouses.

16 December 1917
Such articles of food as tea, sugar, butter, margarine and bacon are now difficult to get. On an average fourteen vessels bringing food and raw materials are being sunk weekly by the enemy submarines. It is become a regular daily thing in all parts of London to see long lines of people outside provision shops waiting to be served and doubtful whether anything will be left when their turn comes. The Food Controller (Lord Rhondda) is still holding out against the growing demand for compulsory rationing.

We have to thank the Navy for that
24 December 1917
As I walked about the streets to-day I encountered a few military funerals of soldiers who died in London hospitals. The coffin is brought to the cemetery on a horsed gun-carriage, covered with the Union Jack. Marching behind it are a small party of soldiers with rifles to fire the parting salute to the dead, and with them a bugler to sound the “Last Post.”  Then comes a mourning-coach, conveying a few relatives. [. . .]

The abundance of meat and poultry this fourth Christmas of the war is amazing. Shops generally were hung with holly. Butchers had their carcasses of beef and mutton, and poulterers had their turkeys and geese decorated with coloured ribbons. And, oh the apples and oranges and nuts at the fruiterer’s and oh, oh, oh, the wine, the whisky, the brandy at the grocer’s! Everything was dear, of course. But the price did not matter. What mattered was supply to meet demand, and everything one could reasonably want in eating and drinking was there to be bought. And this - I repeat - is the fourth Christmas of the War! Marvellous! As Churchill would say, “We have to thank the Navy for that.” [. . .] The truth is that the Food Ministry, while appealing to us to be sparing in our observance of the “festive season,” took care that we should have plenty to keep it up on the old fashion!

9 January 1918
In the House of Lords to-day I reported Lord Curzon announcing the abandonment of the scheme of taking over the British Museum for the Air Ministry. [. . .] Curzon added that the government had come also to the conclusion that the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, was unsuitable for departmental War purposes. These are the only Museums - the British and Natural History - now open to the public.

Mass of humanity blocked the platforms
29 January 1918
The air raid which has been expected for some nights past came off last night. Continuing from eight-thirty pm to one am; it was the most prolonged to which we have so far been treated.[. . .] As I and others were looking out at the weird moonlight spectacle presented by the waters of the Thames and the background of St Thomas’s Hospital without a light showing in any of its many windows, two bombs fell in the river to our left between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. A mighty disturbance of the waters followed, something like a tidal bore the waves of which, sweeping up the river under the arches of Westminster Bridge, rose so high that they poured on to the Terrace. [. . .] 

I decided to move homeward by tube. I said to myself that I would be under cover until I reached Clapham Common Station, where I could wait for the “All Clear,” if it had not already gone. [. . .] All the stations on my way were filled with people, but these gatherings were far outnumbered by the mass of humanity which packed and blocked the platforms, passages and staircases of the two tubes at the Elephant, the Bakerloo, and the City and South London. Whole families were there - mothers with babies and kiddies wrapped in blankets, sitting and lying everywhere, many of them happily asleep. Not a trace of fear did I notice - not the slightest sign of that nervous tension which is the common feeling of people sheltering in their own homes listening perforce to the guns. They were all made easy in mind by their assured sense of security. No sound of the guns pierced to these depths.

A few policemen and special constables moved about, suppressing good-humouredly any sign of fractiousness. The slot-machines had been emptied of what solace they could afford in cigarettes, chocolates and sweets. A railway porter told me that with a view to avoiding the crowding and discomfort of the stations during a raid it has become the practice of many people to take a tube train and remain in it, on its journey from one terminus to the other, until the “All Clear” is sounded. But they sometimes find themselves in trouble at the end; for the train might stop for the night at the wrong terminus for them, with the result that getting home often involved a long walk through deserted streets. [. . .] [After considerable difficulties, MacDonagh manages to catch a rare tram, the driver of which is taking advantage of a lull in the raid to try and run it home to the Clapham Garage.]

Raiders returning for their devilish moonlight revels
At Stockwell stopping point, which is about half-way, that silence was shattered by a sound that made us quake. It was a rocket signal that the raiders were returning to resume their devilish moonlight revels! It explained the long lull. Most of the passengers bolted for the Stockwell tube station. Only three girls - programme-sellers at a theatre - and myself were left in the car when it continued its journey. About five minutes later the guns began to roar. The conductor and driver decided to go on, and advised us to remain in the car until we got to Clapham Common, where we could take refuge in the tube station. [. . .] When we got [there] I rushed the girls to the tube station. There I was confronted by a situation so extraordinary that it astounded me.

The iron lattice-door of the station was closed, and through its chequered bars I could see that the booking-hall was packed with men, women and children. Its congestion afforded no proper shelter from the raid - the people would have been better off in their homes - and its state could only mean that the safer places, the platforms below and the stairs leading to them, were so crowded as to be inaccessible. Two policemen were inside the gates, and what really staggered me was that one of them, when the girls and I asked for admission, lifted up a large piece of cardboard, on which was printed in bold lettering: “Full up; no more room.” Two of the girls dropped to the pavement in hysterics. And no wonder, for the barrage was now terribly affrighting. There was not only a mobile field-gun blazing away on Clapham Common, close at hand, but from the neighbouring Wandsworth Common I could hear the roar of the great gun called “Big Bertha,” joining in the thunder of the other artillery of the London defences, near and far off. The policemen, moved by the pitiable condition of the two girls opened the gates and helped them into the booking-hall. I looked round for the other girl and saw her coolly walking away, homeward bound. In the circumstances there was nothing else for me to do but follow the girl’s example. [. . .]

[It still took MacDonagh some trouble to get home, but eventually he found his wife and her sister at the Johnsons’, next door, in a ‘state of elation’ and shouting in welcome at his safe arrival. But he has yet more to say about the night.]

During the raid, as my wife was going upstairs at the Johnsons’, a piece of shrapnel came through the skylight and fell at her feet. She had a narrow escape from a nasty wound on the head - not to think of the worst. It is known that some of those officially returned as killed and injured during a raid have been the victims of our own exploding shells.

Cabbages, parsnips round the Queen Victoria Memorial 
3 March 1918
During the past week compulsory rationing of certain foods introduced by Lord Rhondda, Food Controller, has been in operation in London and the Home Counties [. . .]. Each household has been provided with two cards - a “meat card” for butcher’s meat and bacon; and a “food card” for butter or margarine. [. . .] The weekly allowances for each person are - 15 oz of beef, mutton, lamb or pork; 5 oz of bacon; and 4 oz of butter or margarine. [. . .] We are all on equality under this system of rationing. The papers announce that the King and Queen  received their cards from the Westminster food committee, and that everyone in Buckingham Palace is on rations. 

1 April 1918
Easter Monday. “No flowers, by request.” This is the Order of the Day for Easter. It means, in the first place, that the very domesticated, stay-at-home Londoner, of whom there are hundreds of thousands, instead of devoting the holiday to planting bulbs in his back garden, as is traditional with him at Easter, should plant tubers; or, better still, extend his sphere of vegetable-growing by taking a plot or allotment in the nearest open space. An example has been set by the King. His Majesty has directed that the flower-beds surrounding the Queen Victoria Memorial at Buckingham Palace are not to present this year the customary blaze of scarlet geraniums, but what is more appropriate, in the national situation, the sight of potatoes, cabbages, parsnips and carrots all a-blooming.

There is extensive vegetable-growing also in the Royal Parks. In Kew Gardens, for instance, two hundred acres have been set aside for the purpose. [. . .] My heart filled with satisfaction on visiting the Commons in my own neighbourhood, Clapham, Tooting and Wandsworth, and also Battersea Park - all under the London County Council - where I saw hundreds of men and women cheerfully and healthily employed on their plots, making the potato and the cabbage grow where only the grass grew before in London’s open spaces.

The Land Army in Hyde Park
20 April 1918
To-day I was brought into contact with the most important of women’s War activities next to the munition-workers - the girls of the Land Army. They had a recruiting procession in London and a meeting in Hyde Park. Before the War there were not more than 90,000 women employed on the land; there are now 260,000. [. . .] The stretch of grass in Hyde Park where the meeting was held was like a farmyard there were so many pens with lambs, pigs, ducks and hens. 

11 May 1918
The Stars and Stripes were to be seen everywhere in London to-day. [. . .] A regiment of the United States Army are to be reviewed by the King at Buckingham Palace and march through London on their way to France.

Fireplaces suspended as if in mid-air
20 May 1918
When I got this morning to the place where bombs were dropped, close to the Bricklayer’s Arms, Old Kent Road, I saw an army officer in khaki, accompanied by a lady, standing amid the ruins of shattered homesteads talking to a group of women, children and men. They were the King and Queen on a round of visits to the bombarded districts. As their Majesties left in their motor-car the people raised no cheers. Surely cheers would have been out of place in the circumstances. The people clapped their hands, the more fitting way of expressing their feelings.

The scene was appalling in its frightful confusion. [. . .] A row of about twelve fairly good-class houses were reduced to hideous piles of wreckage. Brick walls were crumbled. Doors were wrenched from their hinges. Window-frames were torn from their settings. The wallpaper of upper bedrooms was flapping in the wind. Fireplaces were suspended as if in mid-air. The iron railings of the little front gardens were thrown down and smashed. Paving-stones were torn up. Furniture was shattered to bits, or tossed about the road in a tangled litter. Even the houses which escaped demolition had scarcely a window left intact. Here was to be seen the abomination of desolation! Six people were killed in the house that received directly the full destructive force of the bomb.

Monster petition two miles long
24 August 1918
A monster petition to the Government forthwith to intern every enemy alien without distinction of any kind, and take drastic steps to eradicate all German influence in Government circles and society, was adopted at a meeting in Hyde Park this afternoon, which I reported, and was brought to 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s house. The petition had 1,250,000 signatures. It was over two miles in length. Rolled up like a big drum it was carried from Hyde Park to Downing Street in a lorry decorated with the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, the French Tricolour and the flags of other allied nations. It was escorted by a procession with bands and banners almost as long as itself and of so diversified a composition as to be possible only in London in War-time.

London’s ingrained respect for order 
31 August 1918
The London police, Metropolitain and City, are on strike. About 14,000 constables “came out” last night! Not a single policeman is on beat duty, and only a few on point duty controlling traffic! This is the amazing news of the day. The incredible, the inconceivable, the fantastic, certainly the unparalleled, has happened. Yet London, on the whole, is taking it quietly, so thin has our sense of surprise and astonishment been worn by the shocks of four years of war. [. . .] The men have gone on strike for three things - higher pay to meet the increased cost of living; official recognition of their Union; reinstatement of a constable who has been dismissed for this activity as an organiser of the Union. [. . .]

Drivers were free to go as they pleased, [. . .] There was an occasional tangle of omnibuses, taxicabs, motor-cars, carts and drays, but it quickly unwound itself, so desirous did every driver appear to be to give way to his fellows rather than to push ahead himself.

The centre of interest was Downing Street, where, at No 10, Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, was closeted with the leaders of the strike, endeavouring to reach a settlement. Many thousands of constables, all in civilian clothes, were assembled in Parliament Street and Whitehall awaiting the result. They had marched four abreast form the different police divisions. The traffic held itself up to let them pass. [. . .] In the long wait for the result of the conference, the temper of the crowd, strikers and spectators alike, was rising in antagonism. Not even the singing of popular songs by a striker with a fine voice, who was perched on the garden wall of 10 Downing Street, and the selection of airs played by two pipers of the Police Union were altogether successful in soothing this bad temper. [. . .]

The strike lasted just twenty-fours hours [Lloyd George agreed an increase in pay, and the reinstatement of the constable]. A queer business altogether. But it should have a lasting place in the social annals of the country for one reason, if no other - the proof it afforded of London’s ingrained respect for order and decorum. An outbreak of lawlessness had been feared. Not even a single shop was pillaged.

Feed the guns with War Bonds 
16 October 1918
I ventured out to-day for the first time since my accident [six weeks earlier he had been run over by an omnibus and suffered serious injuries] to see the transformation of Trafalgar Square into a shell-shattered French village. The exhibition is intended to advertise what is called the Feed the Guns Campaign - “Feed the guns with War Bonds and War Saving Certificates and help to end the War.” That is its slogan.

The scene depicted in the Square meets the eye, it is said, everywhere at the Front. In the dry basin of the ornamental fountain to the east is a ruined farmhouse riddled with shell-holes, and its garden turned into a horrid mess. The Gordon statue in the centre of the Square is hidden in the ruined tower of the village church. Close by are the trunks of old trees, hollowed by age, which are being used as “look-outs” or posts for watching the enemy. Standing in the basin of the west fountain is a windmill with sails. The village is surrounded by trenches constructed of sandbags. The whole thing is very well done and is attracting tens of thousands of visitors who are liberally emptying their purses for the good cause. Guns are ranged along the north side of the Square below the National Gallery. Every War Bond purchased is stamped with a device fitted within each gun for the purpose. Hence “Feed the Guns.” This is the ninth and last day of the exhibition. The amount obtained is £31,461,969. But Nelson is uninterested.

Hark to those silvery bugle-blasts
11 November 1918
This morning at eleven o’clock I was startled by the booming of maroons, fired from police and fire-brigade stations, the loud reports of those near at hand being faintly re-echoed by others far off. [. . .] I rushed out and inquired what was the matter. “The Armistice!” they exclaimed. “The War is over!” [. . .]

Hardly anybody can have been the same after as they had been before the maroons heralded, not blasts from Hell, as hitherto, but airs from Heaven. London, in fact, lost all control of itself. I hastened to Westminster, feeling assured that the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace would this day, more than ever, be the centres of interesting happenings. The tramcar was packed, all the passengers obviously deeply moved, whether they were chattering and laughing or self-absorbed and silent. The children were let loose from all the schools. As we were passing an elementary school in Kennington Road near “The Horns” the boys and girls came rushing out, yelling and jumping like mad. There were also many signs that business was being suspended. Shops were being closed and shuttered as on Sundays. Who, indeed, could settle down to work on such a day.

Hark to those loud and silvery bugle-blasts! Boy scouts on bicycles dashed past us sounding the “All Clear,” as they had so often done after an air raid. We all laughed heartily. [. . .] At Westminster Bridge Underground Station I saw an evening newspaper bill. It was the first I had seen for years, their use having been prohibited owing to the shortage of paper; and therefore it was a heartening sign of London’s return to normal life. And what news it proclaimed! “Fighting has ceased on all Fronts!” Hurrah! [. . .]

I had heard Big Ben proclaim War; I was now to hear him welcoming Peace [after four years of silence]. [. . .] When the hands of the dial pointed to XII Big Ben struck the hour, booming it in his deep and solemn tones, so old and so familiar. It was a most dramatic moment. The crowd that had assembled in Parliament Square stood silent and still until the last stroke of the clock, when they burst into shouts and exultation.