Severed heads drinking Coke

Born 90 years ago today, Eleanor Coppola emerged from the shadow of her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, to carve out a distinctive career documenting the realities of film-making. Her reputation rests not only on her films about films, but on the remarkable diary she kept during the troubled production of Apocalypse Now - a record that revealed the human cost behind cinematic ambition and set the course for much of her later work.

Eleanor Jessie Neil was born on 4 May 1936 in Los Angeles. Her father, a political cartoonist, died when she was 10, and her mother brought her up in Sunset Beach, 30 miles south of LA. After graduating in applied design from the University of California, Eleanor met Francis Ford Coppola while working as an assistant art director during the filming of Dementia 13 in 1962. They married in Las Vegas the following year. Their three children, Sofia, Roman and Gian-Carlo have followed them into the film industry. 

Eleanor, herself, has directed and/or been the cinematographer on several documentaries about the making of films. Otherwise, among her other activities, she helped manage the family winery in California, and designed for a dance company in San Francisco. She also developed an art project, Circle of Memory, ‘to inspire visitors to recall and commemorate children who are missing or dead.’ Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia.

While Eleanor Coppola’s husband was working on Apocalypse Now, in the 1970s, with a shooting schedule in the Philippines, she kept extensive diary-like notes. These were published in 1979 by Simon & Schuster and simply called Notes, although subsequent editions were called Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now. This book, in turn, led to a film, co-directed by Eleanor Coppola, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Irene and Alan Taylor, authors of the anthology, The Assassin’s Cloak, say the diary is ‘an extraordinary record not only of making a movie but of the emotional and physical prices extracted from all who participated in it.’ Later, she published Notes on a Life, in a similar style, but with a much broader focus on her world. Further information and and extracts from Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now can be found at SF Gate, Los Angeles Times, and The Independent.

In her book, Coppola explains that she went with her husband and their three children to the Philippines in March 1976, where they rented a large house in Manila for the five-month scheduled shooting of Apocalypse Now. The film was conceived as an action/adventure structured on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, but rather than Africa in the 1800s, the film was set on a river in Vietnam during the late sixties. The story concerns a Captain Willard who is given an assignment to go on a classified mission up a river in Vietnam, cross into Cambodia and assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a Green Beret colonel who has apparently gone insane and is conducting the war by his own rules. When Willard finally arrives at his destination, he has been changed by the experience of making the journey. Coppola concludes her introduction by saying: ‘Many of the people who worked on the film were also changed.’

Notes can be digitally borrowed online at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts.

24 June 1976

‘Napa. Yesterday Mike and Arlene saw two hours of rushes, and when they called to ask us if we would like anything from the city, Arlene said she thought the acting was kind of tentative. Francis went into a tailspin. He felt totally defeated. He has spent $7 million, and months of grueling production, and they didn’t say, “Hey, you’ve got some fantastic stuff there.” He really got into a black depression. As I see it, Francis has ninety hours of film, and no chunk can give you an idea of what fifteen minutes’ worth of moments he is going to select from it. What you finally see on the screen does not give the slightest clue of what was left out. For someone to just look at an arbitrary piece is meaningless. Francis felt hopeless and scared. We slept outside on the lawn. It was a beautiful night, so clear with stars. Francis tossed and turned most of the night, having nightmares. We woke up at dawn; there was a crescent of new moon rising near the horizon in the pinkish light. Francis said he had had a dream about how to finish the script, but now that he was awake it wasn’t really any good. Francis talked to Brando on the phone yesterday.’

15 October 1976

‘Thirty-eight takes, and Francis said it was never the way he wanted it. The people who were playing the severed heads sat in their boxes, buried in the ground, from eight in the morning till six at night. All day they were there in the hot sun, with smoke blowing on them. Between takes they were covered with umbrellas. They got out for lunch, but the rest of the time they were there in place.

During one take, Dennis Hopper backed up and stepped right at a girl’s cheek and collapsed part of the container she was in, nearly stepping on her face. The mud on both sides of the dolly track was deep and people kept slipping. Dennis and Fred Forrest both fell during takes. The sound man had someone hold on to his belt in the back and stabilize him as he followed the actors, so that he wouldn’t fall with the boom.

It was one of those days where the dry ice mist, or the orange smoke, or the performance, or the light, or something just never came together for a take that Francis was satisfied with.

At one point I was sitting there looking around. The severed heads were drinking Cokes. The Ifugao children were putting chunks of dry ice in film cans and making the lids pop off. Some Ifugao girls were picking lice out of each other’s hair. One girl had a wrapped skirt, bare breasts and pink plastic hair rollers. A man sitting down in his loincloth held up the fringed ends neatly so they wouldn’t get in the mud. The man with the boa constrictor was giving it a drink of water. Alex was talking about the fake blood . . . “It’s thirty-five dollars a gallon and they’re really using a lot today.” Special effects ran out of orange smoke and had to use red. My favorite old Ifugao priest wasn’t in costume today; he had on a loincloth and beige print, nylon jersey sport shirt. He came up close to the steps to take a look at the fake severed heads. They say his tribe were headhunters as recently as five years ago. Angelo had a tuna sandwich he was passing around, and people were saying, “You know how long its been since I had a tuna sandwich?” ’

17 October 1976

‘Pagsanjan. I shot an interview with Dennis Hopper. One of the things he said that interested me the most was that he thought filmmaking was in the same phase of development that art was during the cathedral-building period. When they built those great cathedrals in Europe, they employed stonemasons, engineers, fresco painters, etc., and created the work through the combined talents of many. By the nineteenth century, art evolved to the point where the major work of the day was being done by individual artists working alone at an easel. Dennis was making the point that now film-making involves the talents of many departments and perhaps eventually major films will be made by one person with a video port-a-pack.’

4 November 1978

‘Napa. Yesterday I went with Francis to a screening of the last half of the film to see some changes he was working on with the editors. I hadn’t seen any footage since June. There is no question in my mind, beyond all my personal feelings and connections, it is an extraordinary work. It feels like Francis’s level of desperation and fear is shrinking. The lawyers and United Artists are starting to talk more optimistically about the financial situation. There is still more work to do in the final sequence at Kurtz Compound, but each cut seems to improve, get closer.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 4 May 2016.

I am finally an Ambassador

‘I am finally officially an Ambassador. At eight-fifty yesterday morning, the Chief of Protocol from the Ministry of External Affairs called at the Residence where my principal colleagues had already assembled - the military men in an exceptionally high state of polish. We rode in an open procession - motorcycle and patrol car - to the President’s Palace (the Rashtrapati Bhavan) at the gates of which we were met by a detachment of mounted lancers on beautifully matched bay horses.’ This is John Kenneth Galbraith, a Canadian-American economist and diplomat who died 20 years ago today. Although not a diarist by nature, while US ambassador he did keep a daily diary, and this was later published as Ambassador’s Journal.

Galbraith was born in 1908 into a farming family of Scottish descent in Iona Station, Ontario. He studied agricultural economics at the Ontario Agricultural College (now part of the University of Guelph), graduating in 1931, and completed a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1934. He became a US citizen in 1937. In 1937 he married Catherine Merriam Atwater, with whom he had four sons. They resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and had a summer home in Townshend, Vermont.

Galbraith’s career combined academia, public service, and writing. He taught economics at Harvard University for much of his career, while also serving in government roles during and after the Second World War. He was a prominent adviser to Democratic administrations and served as US Ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963 under John F. Kennedy. As such, he played a significant diplomatic role at a critical moment in the Cold War. He developed a close working relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and sought to strengthen US-Indian ties while respecting India’s non-aligned position. During the Sino-Indian War, he acted as a key intermediary, helping to coordinate US military assistance to India. His dispatches and memoranda from New Delhi combined policy analysis with detailed personal observation, and were influential in shaping Washington’s understanding of South Asian geopolitics.

Galbraith wrote widely, publishing many books. His style was unusually accessible for an economist, and his books reached a broad public well beyond academia - thus helping make him a major interpreter of economics for general readers in the postwar era. Among his most important books were American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), as well as the later synthesis A Short History of Financial Euphoria (1990). 

After leaving India, Galbraith remained an influential political figure and public intellectual. He continued to advise Democratic leaders, supported the presidential campaigns of Lyndon B. Johnson and later George McGovern, and became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. Within academia and public debate, he advanced a critique of corporate power and conventional economic theory, arguing for the importance of public investment and institutional analysis. He was honored with major civilian awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died on 29 April 2006. Further information is widely available, see Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the JFK Library.

Although there’s no evidence of Galbraith being a regular diarist, he did keep a day-by-day account of his service as US Ambassador to India. He recorded meetings with Nehru, Kennedy, Indian officials, diplomats and journalists, as well as the practical detail of embassy life and the pressures of the Sino-Indian War. Ambassador’s Journal - available to read online at Internet Archive - was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1969 and runs to nearly 700 pages. In later years he would write and publish two memoirs - A Life in Our Times (1981) and Name-Dropping (1999) - which drew on memory, papers and correspondence rather than any further diaries.

Here is the opening paragraph to Galbraith's introduction for Ambassador’s Journal, followed by three extracts.

Introduction: ‘In the autumn of 1960, after John F. Kennedy had called to tell me that I was to be his Ambassador to India, I decided it would be an interesting time and that I would keep a full account of what happened. It was a taxing decision. At the end of a long day, the temptation to say to hell with it and go to bed can be overwhelming. Even worse is the temptation to take care of one’s high resolve with a few perfunctory words. The more important the events, the wearier you are and the better the seeming excuse for dismissing it all. Nevertheless, I persisted and this is the result. Sometimes I wrote in the evening, more often when I got up next morning. If I had a journey in prospect, I saved up and wrote on the plane. And I also wrote more faithfully of travels than of sedentary days at the Embassy so the journal gives an exaggerated impression of movement. However, I did travel a lot. The date and place of the entry refer, in each instance, to the date and place of writing and not necessarily of the events described.’

12 April 1961

‘After lunch Kitty and I were photographed at great length looking at birds, flowers and each other and at five I called on the Prime Minister. This involved some ceremony.

First, I went to the Foreign Office where I picked up the Chief of Protocol. Then we went to Nehru’s Parliament office where we made our way through the crowded antechamber. Then after a short wait we were ushered in. It was the same smallish, slightly used-looking and not very handsome office in which I had visited him two years before. I presented myself as the most amateur of diplomats. He proclaimed himself an amateur prime minister. I think that truth will not be a barrier to our association - both of us were professing a modesty no one else would find creditable. We then chatted about our respective books, Cambridge University in our respective days there, and the improvement in India which I told him I measured by the number of bicycles. He agreed on the value of this index. He said that he had heard that the new Administration was dominated by Rhodes Scholars. I said that the key positions in the world were still held by Cambridge men. Then, as I was about to go, he said he wanted to talk of the Congo. This continued for half an hour or more - rather to the discomfort of the new French Ambassador who was waiting his turn. He mentioned the misunderstanding of Lumumba - “not a Communist and he probably doesn’t know what Communism is”, the delays in transporting Indian troops; the insufficiently hard stand against the white irregulars and Belgians, the mistreatments of Dayal by the U.S. papers “with some official inspiration”; the shortcomings of Timberlake, the United States Ambassador in the Congo, and the prediction of some unspecified American that India intended to colonize the Congo. Despite all the briefing, I would have handled myself better if I had been informed. Where I could respond, as in the case of the reference to colonization, I did. “I am sure you know that no responsible member of the American Government ever made any such statement.” For the rest, I found silence golden but uncomfortable. Afterward, I sent off my first cable to the Department and then went to dinner pleasantly with my chief Political Counselor.’

13 April 1961, New Delhi

‘I displayed my exceptionally modest administrative talents this morning - I reviewed plans to build offices in the basement of the new Chancery which seemed insane, I considered the Residence which is under construction but on strike - the contractor seems to be chiseling on the minimum wage and is paying something less than two rupees (about forty cents) a day; and I went into the matter of a swimming pool for our staff and youngsters. I also sent a note of congratulations to the Soviet Ambassador on “the epochal journey of Major Gagarin” I was officially advised that the household staff is competent in all matters and included even one or two experts in imaginative larceny. “They stole the Bunkers blind” (This was a grave exaggeration. Ellsworth Bunker emerged quite solvent.) I borrowed some books from USIS for the empty bookshelves at the Residence and had lunch with my Cultural Counselor, and dinner with Maffitt and my old classmate at California, Robert Carr, who is now Consul-General in Bombay. Maffitt’s cooking, as also his wine, improves greatly on that of the Residence.’

19 April 1961, New Delhi

‘I am finally officially an Ambassador. At eight-fifty yesterday morning, the Chief of Protocol from the Ministry of External Affairs called at the Residence where my principal colleagues had already assembled - the military men in an exceptionally high state of polish. We rode in an open procession - motorcycle and patrol car - to the President’s Palace (the Rashtrapati Bhavan) at the gates of which we were met by a detachment of mounted lancers on beautifully matched bay horses. They escorted us to an open courtyard where an honor guard of Sikhs was drawn up in two ranks - perhaps the best turned-out soldiers in the world. I mounted the reviewing block while the national anthems were played. Then I inspected the guard, nothing seemed seriously wrong. I drew heavily on old newsreels for my protocol, but the Commanding Officer was there to nudge me if I needed it.

After congratulating the O.C., we went into the palace and rehearsed the ceremony. Then we had the ceremony. A slow approach to the President, my speech, his reply, presentation of credentials, then down to his study for a private chat, and finally on to a state room for a public reception for all present. It was exceedingly well done, the Indians approach ceremony as though they meant it, rather than, as in the United States, in a kind of abashed reluctance. And the soldiers, band and military aides were all sparkling by our standards. My speech, in which I urged accomplishment as distinct from conversation and noted that the warmest words of friendship were exchanged just before the breaking of diplomatic relations, was evidently well-regarded. When we emerged to come home, my automobile flag was unfurled for the first time.

After some champagne for the staff, I got into the TCM [a meeting room] again and spent the afternoon on routine matters ending up with a meeting with Stebbins. The question is whether I should see the principal exiled leader from Nepal. Obviously I should. He is a liberal and a democrat — and the American Ambassador should be available to any leader of importance.

The Cuban business (the Bay of Pigs) has come and the effect here is not good. I am afraid that even if we win, we will lose. Castro would eventually have died on his vine. His army was not a threat and now we lose prestige and esteem where it counts. This inability to balance small Rover Boy gains against large general loss was the prime weakness of the Eisenhower Administration. The same people who erred before are diligently promoting error again.’

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

Today marks the 190th anniversary of the birth of Ramakrishna, the Bengali temple priest and religious teacher whose influence on modern Hindu thought was profound despite his leaving no written works of his own. Born in rural poverty, he became known for his intense devotional practices and spiritual experiences, attracting a growing circle of followers. This life is documented in unusual detail not through autobiography but through the contemporaneous diary of his disciple Mahendranath Gupta, whose careful observations, were later published as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

Gadadhar Chattopadhyay was born on 18 February 1836 in the village of Kamarpukur, about 65 miles northwest of Calcutta, the youngest child of Khudiram Chattopadhyay and Chandramani Devi, poor but devout Brahmins. His father, known for his strict piety, died when Gadadhar was seven, leaving the family in precarious circumstances. The boy attended the local village school but showed little interest in formal education, preferring devotional songs, religious drama, and solitary meditation. From childhood he exhibited unusual religious sensibility, entering trances during worship and becoming absorbed in images and rituals that others regarded conventionally.

Aged 17, Gadadhar joined his elder brother Ramkumar in Calcutta, where the latter ran a small Sanskrit school and served as a priest. In 1855, Ramkumar was appointed priest at the newly built Kali temple complex at Dakshineswar, endowed by the wealthy patron Rani Rashmoni, and Gadadhar soon followed. After Ramkumar’s death the following year, Gadadhar, now known as Ramakrishna, assumed priestly duties at the temple dedicated to Kali, the Divine Mother. There he underwent a series of intense spiritual experiences, including prolonged trances and visions, which convinced him that the God could be experienced directly. His unconventional behaviour alarmed some observers but attracted others who recognised in him a figure of unusual spiritual authority.

In 1859, at the age of 23, Ramakrishna married Saradamani Mukhopadhyay, later revered as Sarada Devi, who was then about five years old, in accordance with the custom of arranged child marriage. She joined him years later at Dakshineswar and became his spiritual companion rather than a conventional wife; the marriage remained celibate. Over the following decades Ramakrishna’s reputation spread, drawing visitors from across Bengal, including householders, students, reformers, sceptics, and future religious leaders, including Narendranath Datta, who would later become Swami Vivekananda (see This universal religion). Ramakrishna himself wrote nothing. He died of throat cancer at Cossipore, near Calcutta, in 1886, aged fifty.

Although Ramakrishna himself never kept a diary, one of his disciples - Mahendranath Gupta, a young schoolteacher - did keep a detailed record of the last years of his life. Gupta had received an English education and worked as headmaster of a Calcutta school. Troubled by personal and philosophical doubts, he encountered Ramakrishna on 26 February 1882. That very evening, deeply impressed, he began recording what he had seen and heard. Gupta continued this practice for four years, from 1882 until 1886, writing entries immediately after each visit, often the same day. He concealed his identity behind the initial ‘M.’ and preserved his notebooks privately for many years. 

Beginning in 1902 Gupta published his diary in Bengali under the title Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita (The Nectar of Ramakrishna’s Words), issuing five volumes between 1902 and 1932. The English translation by Swami Nikhilananda, published in 1942 as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, allowed the diary to become internationally known - it can be read online at Internet Archive. Here are the opening paragraphs of the first two dated entries.

February 1882

‘It was on a Sunday in spring, a few days after Sri Ramakrishna’s birthday, that M. met him the first time. Sri Ramakrishna lived at the Kalibari, the temple garden of Mother Kali, on the bank of the Ganges at Dakshineswar.

M., being at leisure on Sundays, had gone with his friend Sidhu to visit several gardens at Baranagore. As they were walking in Prasanna Banerji’s garden, Sidhu said: “There is a charming place on the bank of the Ganges where a paramahamsa lives. Should you like to go there?” M. assented and they started immediately for the Dakshineswar temple garden. They arrived at the main gate at dusk and went straight to Sri Ramakrishna’s room. And there they found him seated on a wooden couch, facing the east. With a smile on his face he was talking of God. The room was full of people, all seated on the floor, drinking in his words in deep silence.

M. stood there speechless and looked on. It was as if he were standing where all the holy places met and as if Sukadeva himself were speaking the word of God, or as if Sri Chaitanya were singing the name and glories of the Lord in Puri with Ramananda, Swarup, and the other devotees. . .’

11 March 1882

‘About eight o’clock in the morning Sri Ramakrishna went as planned to Balaram Bose’s house in Calcutta. It was the day of the Dolayatra. Ram, Manomohan, Rakhal, Nityagopal, and other devotees were with him. M., too, came, as bidden by the Master.

The devotees and the Master sang and danced in a state of divine fervour. Several of them were in an ecstatic mood. Nityagopal’s chest glowed with the upsurge of emotion, and Rakhal lay on the floor in ecstasy, completely unconscious of the world. The Master put his hand on Rakhal’s chest and said: “Peace. Be quiet.” This was Rakhal’s first experience of ecstasy. He lived with his father in Calcutta and now and then visited the Master at Dakshineswar. About this time he had studied a short while in Vidyasagar’s school at Syampukur.

When the music was over, the devotees sat down for their meal. Balaram stood there humbly, like a servant. Nobody would have taken him for the master of the house. M. was still a stranger to the devotees, having met only Narendra at Dakshineswar.

Sri Ramakrishna said: “When, hearing the name of Hari or Rama once, you shed tears and your hair stands on end, then you may know for certain that you do not have to perform such devotions as the sandhya any more. Then only will you have a right to renounce rituals; or rather, rituals will drop away of themselves. Then it will be enough if you repeat only the name of Rama or Hari, or even simply Om.” Continuing, he said, “The sandhya merges in the Gayatri, and the Gayatri merges in Om.”

M. looked around him with wonder and said to himself: “What a beautiful place! What a charming man! How beautiful his words are! I have no wish to move from this spot.” After a few minutes he thought, “Let me see the place first; then I’ll come back here and sit down.”

As he left the room with Sidhu, he heard the sweet music of the evening service arising in the temple from gong, bell, drum, and cymbal. He could hear music from the nahabat, too, at the south end of the garden. . . ’

Gupta’s diary ends shortly before Ramakrishna’s death on 16 August 1886. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Inner Spiritual Awakening.

Something of myself

The English writer Rudyard Kipling, who died 80 years ago today, left behind a treasure of much-loved stories and poems, such as The Jungle Book, Kim and If. But, he didn’t leave much autobiographical material - hating the idea of biographers churning over his life - and what diary material has survived is thanks to chance rather than purpose: one diary from 1885, when he was working as a journalist in India, and several notebooks he kept while on motoring tours. In addition, and of much use to biographers, are surviving partial transcripts of the daily diary kept by Kipling’s American wife, Carrie, the originals of which were destroyed by the Kiplings’ daughter Elsie.

Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. He was named after Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire near where his parents had met and courted. Aged five he was taken, with his younger sister Alice, to live with a couple in Southsea, who boarded children of British nationals serving in India, and they remained there for six years. Alice returned to India, while Rudyard was admitted to the United Services College at Westward Ho!. In 1882, he, too, returned to India - his parents lacking the resources to send him to Oxford, and doubting his academic ability to win a scholarship - where his father, in Lahore by this time, secured him a job as assistant editor of a local newspaper, the Civil and Military Gazette, published six days a week. This suited Kipling, whose need to write (journalism, poetry, short stories), apparently, was unstoppable. In the late 1880s, he moved to Allahabad to work for The Pioneer, though was discharged in 1889 after a dispute. He published a first collection of his poems as Departmental Ditties in 1886, and a first prose collection, Plain Tales from the Hills, in Calcutta in early 1888.

Determined on a literary career, Kipling returned to London, visiting Japan and North America on the way. He published several short stories, and a novel, and also took another tour, this one to South Africa and the antipodes. In early 1892, in London, he married the American Carrie Balestier, and they settled in Vermont where their two daughters (Elsie and Josephine) were born. During the next four years, he wrote several books of short stories (not least The Jungle Book and its sequel), a further novel and much poetry. But, in 1896, the Kiplings left the US - partly because of an increase in perceived anti-British feeling and partly because of a dispute with Carrie’s family - to return to England, where they first lived in Torquay, Devon, then Rottingdean and, finally, in a house called Bateman’s in Burwash, Sussex. A third child, John, was born to the Kiplings in 1897. And from 1898, for a decade, the family travelled every winter to South Africa (where they were given a house by Cecil Rhodes) - except for 1899. That year, the Kiplings sailed to America, so Carrie could see her mother, but the journey across the Atlantic was very hard, and Kipling and Josephine both fell seriously ill. Josephine did not survive.

By this time, Kipling was famous. He continued writing short stories and novels, producing Kim and the Just So Stories soon after the turn of the century, as well as songs and poems (such as If, published in 1910). In 1907, after turning down other honours, including a knighthood, he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature. With the onset of war, Kipling supported the fight against Germany, and even helped his son, who had eyesight problems, get enlisted. However, John went missing within a few weeks, and his body was never recovered. Devastated, Kipling continued to write after the war, but never returned to the bright colourful children’s stories he had once so delighted in; indeed, his conservative and imperialist views fell out of fashion, and his writing too. He died in London on 18 January 1936. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, next to the graves of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Kipling Society, the BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica or The Poetry Foundation.

Kipling was apt to destroy many of his personal papers, disliking the idea of biographers churning over his life; his wife, Carrie, and daughter, Elsie Bambridge, took a similar view. Only a few diaries kept by Kipling have survived by chance: one from when he was young in 1885, and a set of notebooks he kept while on motoring holidays later in his life. Carrie, kept a daily diary from 1892 until her husband’s death. Although the originals were destroyed by Bambridge, two biographers, Charles Carrington and Lord Birkenhead, had already made extensive notes and transcribed parts of the diary. These are held by the University of Sussex’s Kipling archive at The Keep, but The Kipling Society also has copies (and has made them available online, with an index).

Biographers have made good use of the 1885 diary - see Andrew Lycett’s Rudyard Kipling, for example - but the full text can be found in Rudyard Kipling: Something of Myself and Other Autobiographical Writings edited by Thomas Pinney, Cambridge University Press, 1991, available to preview at Googlebooks. (Something of Myself is a rare autobiographical text, started by Kipling in the last months of his life but not properly finished - Carrie edited it for publication.) Here are several extracts of the 1885 diary included in that Pinney edition.

28 January 1885
‘Scraps on Accidents on Indian Railways, The Dynamitard’s attempts at Westminster and Hume’s vegetarianism. About one column altogether. An easy day as far as the paper was concerned; there being plenty of matter in hand and not much proofwork.’

13 February 1885
‘Scrap. Musketry schools. Annotated Prejvalsky’s explorations in Thibet - and rec’d bellew’s Sanitary Report for notes of the week. Typhoid at home went in today: Mem scrap on Rai Kanega Lall and design for town hall must be done tomorrow.’

25 February 1885
‘Sting of yesterday blinded me couldn’t see. Went to hospital Lawrie came over about mid day and looked at it. Attention more occupied by blain of my face. Must come to hospital tomorrow and see how cocaine works. Did not to go office.’

26 February 1885
‘Eye all right. W said it wasn’t and so lost my work for the day - served him right. Went to hospital [?] cocaine and was impressed. To Cinderella in the evening and was impresseder.’

6 April 1885
‘No bank holiday for me. Special of three columns on review. Fine weather at last but I must shut up with a click before long. Too little sleep and too much seen.’

1 May 1885
‘On the road to Kotgur. May day at Mahasu inexpressibly lovely. Lay on the grass and felt health coming back, again. De brath a delightful man. What a blessed luxury is idleness. Eagles and shot at bottles.’

21 August 1885
‘Dinner with Tarleton Young at his chummery. Where met one LeMaistre who is a womans mind small and mean featured. He may be decent enough for aught I know. Usual philander in Gardens. Home to count the risks of my resolution.’

Transcripts of Kipling’s diaries of his motor tours, around 100 pages, are held in the archive at The Keep. The original notebooks were thought lost, at least until found in a dusty drawer at Macmillan (see The Daily Telegraph). Several articles in the Kipling Journal mention or quote from the notebooks, for example see volume 91 dated December 2017,

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 18 January 2016.

Missing Tom and Kate

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the tragic death of the British mountain climber, Alison Hargreaves. Having scaled Everest without the aid of sherpas or bottled oxygen, she was intent on completing similar climbs of the second and third highest mountains, K2 and Kangchenjunga, but she died on the descent from the K2 summit. Her diaries, as used by David Rose and Ed Douglas in their biography, Regions of the Heart, reveal a woman constantly torn between love of her two children and her obsession not only to climb, but to make her mark as a mountain climber.

Hargreaves was born in 1962, and grew up in Belper, Derbyshire, the middle child of three. Her family were often out walking on the English hills, and aged nine she had raced ahead of them to be the first to the summit of Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. She was introduced to rock climbing aged 13, preferring to climb than to study for Oxford as her parents had done. Aged 16, while working in a climbing shop, she met amateur climber Jim Ballard, nearly twice her age. She left home two years later to live with him. The couple ran an outdoor equipment shop, while Hargreaves trained and climbed in her spare time. By her mid-20s, she had climbed in the Himalayas, but in 1988 - the year she married Jim - she was back in the Alps, notably climbing the north face of the Eiger while six months pregnant with Tom. Her second child, Kate, was born two years later.

By 1993, Alison and Jim were in so much debt they had to leave their house. They relocated to live in Switzerland, in an old Land Rover, so that Hargreaves could continue to climb. That year she became the first person ever to scale the six north faces of the Alps alone and in one season. This brought her media and sponsorship attention. She wrote a book about the feat - A Hard Day’s Summer - but it was poorly received, and money problems continued.

Hargreaves decided that her next project - for personal and financial reasons - should be Everest. She bailed on a first attempt in 1994 fearing frostbite, but a second attempt in May 1995 succeeded, making her the first woman to reach the summit alone and without supplementary oxygen (the first man was Reinhold Messner - see Death on Nanga Parbat). She quickly made further plans to conquer the second two highest mountains in the world (K2 and Kangchenjunga). After a brief trip back to see her family in the UK, she returned to the Himalayas in June to join an American team with a permit to climb K2. For weeks, stormy weather kept the team at base camp. By August, remnants of the team had joined up with members of other teams from Canada and New Zealand. Peter Hillary, son of Edmund who along with Tenzing Norgay completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest (see On top of Mount Everest), was also there with a Spanish team.

On 13 August, Hillary decided to turn back and go down, forecasting a change in weather conditions. However, Hargreaves and Spaniard Javier Olivar saw fine weather and made for the summit, reaching it at 6.45pm, making Hargreaves the first woman to conquer both Everest and K2 without supplemental oxygen or support. Four other climbers reached the summit behind them; but, then, all six died in a violent storm on the way down. A seventh climber that had turned back below the summit died later from the effects of exposure. The next day two other Spanish climbers, lower down, saw debris equipment, and a body in the distance, and concluded it was Hargreaves who had been blown off the mountain in the storm.

Hillary, in an interview with The Independent, noted that a bizarre chemistry had developed among the several expeditions on the mountain ‘that meant they were going for the summit no matter what’. Of Alison, in particular, he said: ‘[She] was a brilliant climber but she had tremendous commercial pressures on her and she became obsessed. When you spoke to her it was clear that climbing came first and everything else was secondary.’

Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, a Guardian interview with Jim Ballard, the BBC, or The Independent’s obituary. Alison and Jim’s son, Tom, later became the first person to climb solo all six major north faces of the Alps in one winter - see The Telegraph, for example.

Hargreaves left behind a large volume of diary material which, apparently, was fought over by her husband on one side and her parents on the other. In any case, two journalist/climbers, David Rose and Ed Douglas were given access to them for their sympathetic biography Regions of the Heart - The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves (Michael Joseph, 1999).

The authors say: ‘Alison’s diaries provide a record of her life which is well in excess of a million words. For the period 1973-92, the quotations from them found here were copied by us from the originals, which were left at Meerbrook Lea when the house was repossessed in 1993 and rescued by her parents. Later diary entries were published in her own A Hard Day’s Summer (Hodder & Stoughton, 1994) and Jim Ballard’s One and two Halves to K2 (BBC Books, 1996).’

Unfortunately, their book quotes very few actual diary entries, and rarely do they come referenced with a date. The following diary-focused extracts in Regions of the Heart can all be found in the last chapter, Nemesis.

‘ ‘I’ve been missing Tom and Kate today,’ she wrote in her diary as early as 3 July, ‘probably because I have had time to think about them. I’ve half felt like not wanting really to stay and finish this “job off” - but I don’t know if or when I’ll get another chance, so I might regret it.’ ’

‘Cooney remembers her returning in tears on 11 July from one of the agonizingly short telephone calls she made on the satellite phone to her children. ‘I spoke for two and a half minutes,’ she wrote miserably in her diary.’ ’

‘ ‘I am feeling pressure back home,’ she wrote in her diary on 5 August at the height of her crisis. ‘Why I failed, what went wrong. Personally it doesn’t matter but I worry about how everyone else will see it.’ Except, of course, that how others saw her was very important indeed to her self-esteem, and for Alison failure was bitterly personal.’

‘On 5 August, with the porters ready to start carrying her equipment down the glacier next day, she wrote of how she missed the children. She’d now spent more than a hundred days of 1995 away from Tom and Kate. Yet there was still a desire for the mountain, too. ‘It eats away at me - wanting the children and wanting K2,’ she wrote. ‘I feel like I’m pulled in two. Maybe they’d be happier if Mum was around but maybe summiting K2 would help make a better future for them. Long term, having me back safe and sound is surely more important.’ ’ [It’s not clear from the authors’ text whether this last is an actual diary entry or not.]

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 13 August 2015.

Charlie instead of Concord

‘[Suu Kyi] came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume [. . .] She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.’ This is part of a diary kept by Ma Thanegi, the personal assistant of Aung San Suu Kyi, during the early years campaigning for democracy in Burma. Today, Suu Kyi - the once celebrated global symbol of resistance to tyranny - turns 80.

Born in Rangoon (now Yangon) on 19 June 1945, Suu Kyi was the daughter of General Aung San, revered as the founder of modern Burma and architect of its independence from Britain. He was assassinated in 1947 when Suu Kyi was only two. Educated in Burma and later in New Delhi, Suu Kyi studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. After graduating, she lived in New York City, where she worked at the United Nations, primarily on budget matters. 

In 1972, Suu Kyi married Michael Aris, a Cuban-born Englishman and a scholar of Tibetan culture, then living in Bhutan. They had one son the following year, and another in 1977. The family relocated regularly, living in Bhutan, Japan and India, but settling mostly in England. Between 1985 and 1987, she was working toward an M. Phil degree in Burmese literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (and was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1990).

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her ailing mother but was soon swept up into the popular uprising against the military regime. After the bloody suppression of the 8888 Uprising, she emerged as the leader of the newly formed National League for Democracy (NLD). Though tens of thousands of demonstrators were killed, and the country placed under martial law by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Suu Kyi continued to campaign across the country. It was during these chaotic months that Ma Thanegi, then an artist aligned with pro-democracy painters, joined Suu Kyi as her assistant - and diarist, at the request of Suu Kyi’s husband to help keep him informed back in England.

Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1989, and spent nearly 15 of the next 21 years in detention, winning the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize while confined. Released in 2010, she led the NLD to a historic election win in 2015, becoming Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader. Her international standing plummeted after she defended the military’s brutal crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017, denying allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

In February 2021, the military staged another coup, arrested Suu Kyi, and later sentenced her to 33 years in prison on politically motivated charges. Some sentences were reduced in 2023, and she was moved to house arrest due to health concerns. As of 2025, she remains incommunicado at age 79, while the NLD has been effectively dismantled and Myanmar continues to descend into civil conflict between the junta and pro-democracy forces. Further information is available at Wikipedia, the BBC and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Extracts from Ma Thanegi’s 1989-1990 diaries are quoted extensively in Peter Popham’s biography The Lady and the Peacock (Doubleday, 2011 - see Googlebooks), and they offer an earthy, unsentimental portrait of the woman once hailed as ‘the Burmese Gandhi’. 

Here is how Popham introduces, in his ‘Afterword’, this diary material: ‘There are many things about Suu’s life that are fascinating and instructive. It is extraordinary to observe a woman emerge from the comforts and duties of a suburban life in her early forties and take on a stature and role unimaginable even a year before. [. . .] Within months of accepting the leadership of the democratic movement she was already a legend throughout her country. But it never went to her head. I obtained proof of that when an acquaintance in London, who unfortunately I cannot name, gave me the diaries kept during Suu’s campaigning trips in 1989 by Ma Thanegi, her close companion. Suu’s radiant humanity shines out of those pages, along with her good humour, her stoicism, her appreciation of modern lavatories, and her frequent explosions of temper.’

Popham goes on to say that he met Ma Thanegi three times, and that when he told her he’d been given a copy of her diaries and planned to use them in his book, ’she did not demur’. He then explains how he believes he was betrayed by Ma Thanegi during an undercover trip to Burma in 2010, and how this led to his expulsion (before being able to conclude an interview with Suu Kyi). Ma Thanegi had spent three years in prison, and when released in the mid-1990s, had shown herself to be far more of a critic of Suu Kyi than a friend. Popham suggests she had been ‘won round’ by the country’s military intelligence. Suu Kyi herself did not cooperate with Popham in writing the biography, but Ma Thanegi’s diaries do provide a unique and substantial primary resource. 

Popham reproduces extracts without academic referencing. However, what emerges is a vivid, often intimate account of life on the campaign trail - packed roads, military harassment, star-filled nights, and soft-boiled eggs eaten before dawn. Thanegi is not reverent: she describes Suu Kyi’s tantrums, fatigue, and wistfulness as much as her charisma. There are detailed accounts of wardrobe choices and comic tales of being sprayed with knock-off perfume by well-meaning villagers.

Here are a few entries from Ma Thanegi’s diaries, mostly undated as quoted by Popham.

‘Gandhi is Suu Kyi’s role model and hero. Everyone knew it was going to be dangerous: some of the students had the Tharana Gon sutra chanted over them to prepare themselves for sudden death, a mantra recited in Buddhist ritual over the body of the deceased. Some became monks or nuns for a few days in preparation.’

***

‘Great harassment in Bassein, [. . .] armed soldiers barred the way out of the house we were staying in, only allowing us out in twos and threes to visit friends etc.’

***

‘An Australian senator came to see Ma Ma at 8am, [General Saw Maung had] told him elections would be held soon, after discussions with parties . . . Spent the whole night at Ma Ma’s place. Ma Ma up and down stairs whole evening, signing letters, seeing to papers, books. Dr Michael phoned after Ma Ma finished writing a letter to him.’

***

‘Left Rangoon at 4.45 am, fifteen minutes late. Ma Ma a bit annoyed. She was sleepy in the early part of the morning. I held her down by the shoulders on bumpy roads: fragile and light as a papier-mâché doll. Forced to stop unplanned at Pyawbwe . . . Ma Ma VERY annoyed. Stopped for sugarcane juice at Tat-kone: delicious! Ma Ma loved it. Lunch at Ye Tar Shay. People in the villages amazed and overjoyed to see Ma Ma. Ate lunch, fried rice ordered from Chinese restaurant next door.’

***

‘Ma Ma looked so wistful when I swiped chilli suace and onions from under her very nose. Later I relented and picked out onions sans sauce for her. Chilli sauce v. unhealthy stuff in Burma.’

***

11 February 1989

‘She wore green plaid longyi, white jacket, green cardigan with matching scarf and gloves. Got up (had to) at 4.30. Left for Loilam at 5.30, after I insisted she eat soft-boiled eggs.

At her request I borrowed a tape of Fifties and Sixties songs to listen to on the way, coincidentally the same we were listening to in Rangoon. I remember her singing along loudly ‘Love you more than I can say’ as she scooted upstairs. We sang along with the tape on the way: ‘Seven lonely days.’ etc.

Ma Ma v. annoyed at easy going plans. There was supposed to be a convoy on the road ‘for our protection’ but there was no one in sight. We reached Loilam without seeing any. Ma Ma hit the roof.’

***

‘Wonderful sight at Dukgo: as we entered the town the local NLD had issued red NLD caps and we marched in singing a democratic song which was also blared out from one car. We pushed in front of the MI’s videos and still cameras. Ma Ma had been saying for days how she was on the brink of losing her voice but it came on full, clear and strong as she started to talk at the NLD office, amplified out into the road, and she sounded darn mad.

While Ma Ma was talking, people crept up to listen at the side of the road. Police and soldiers told them to get back but we told them to come up and listen. Planned for Ma Ma to walk to jail to visit prisoners but when she came out of the NLD office such a large crowd followed her that we were afraid the police - who hurried to the police station and closed the gates - would say we were invading it and shoot us down. So many kids and women in the crowd that we decided just to pass the police station and jail by.

We walked out of town, crowds following, and I was afraid we would be walking all the way home. But at last, with the last goodbye, Ma Ma got into the car.

Had engine trouble all the way: water pipe broke late afternoon. Stopped for a while at Jundasar at a rice mill. Also we had to stop near a stream just before Dai-oo. Large pack of stray dogs - one of the boys shouted at them about 2/88. SLORC’s rule banning groups of more than five gathering together . . . [. . .]

Ma Ma sat in car and asked if I didn’t feel a sense of unreality about all we are doing. I said, dealing with stupid people can get us caught up in weeks of stupidity, no wonder it makes us all feel so weird.’

***

24 March 1989

‘Left Rangoon 6 am by boat [. . .] Reached Kim Yang Gaung in evening but no one came out of their houses. The whole place deserted, people peeping from deep inside darkened huts, only a few dogs going about their business. Learned that a local man who was democratic-minded was shot dead through forehead by army sergeant or corporal one week ago.

From there a long cart ride to Let Khote Kon. Easier to have gone on by boat but one of the NLD organisers felt we should visit that place and he was right. Ma Ma made speech in compound of a dainty little old lady named Ma Yin Nu. A very big crowd. I gave Ma Yin Nu a photo of Ma Ma . . .

Equally long cart ride back to boat, though it felt longer. Soon it became very dark. We never saw such large stars. As usual I pestered Ma Ma, telling her the names of my favourites. Halfway along our cart met a bunch of armed soldiers, five or six, who rudely called out to us, asking who we were, where we were going etc. There were about six carts in our caravan, our boys were travelling behind us but immediately they brought their cart up and parked between us and the soldiers. . .

Back on the boat at 8.30 pm and found out that we couldn’t leave because it was overloaded with people - NLD people from the villages we had visited had come along for the ride. Damn. And the tide was going out. We slept on moored boat, one corner partitioned off with two mosquito nets where Ma Ma and I curled up unwashed.’

***

‘Ma Ma getting to know well the Burmese character, the bad side. Said she is fed up to the teeth with pushy egoistic stupid people. She is getting to know the true Burmese character and is getting depressed by it. I have a feeling she is too idealistic and emotionally vulnerable. Easy-going as we Burmese are, we are totally selfish, ostrich-like in dealing with unpleasantness and very short-sighted.

When she is in a pensive mood I would search her face and feel a deep sorrow that so many burdens are on this frail-looking and gentle person. I think she needs to be more cynical to deal with the Burmese and of course hard-hearted to some extent. She feels hurt when people complain about the rudeness of our boys, I tell her politeness would not penetrate the thick skulls and dim minds of these people.

She came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume that they all think is great, and the perfumes are either something called Concord or Charlie. Charlie is slightly more expensive, or Tea Rose, the scent of rose, and we are beginning to recognise these three. Ma Ma is more often sprayed with Concord and we hate this spray business. These ladies are not too careful where they aim the nozzle. Sometimes it gets into her face or her mouth, she has to be careful about moving her face or it would go into her eyes. She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.’

This article is a much revised version of one first published on 19 June 2015.

I will endeavour humbly

‘I will endeavour humbly but firmly, to acquire or achieve’ the following: practise yoga; acquire good knowledge; become a member of the British Parliament ‘do good to my country by all means in my power’; try to become a preacher of the highest philosophical religion. This is from a single significant diary entry made by the great Indian political leader and social reformer, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who died 110 years ago today. The diary entry was found and revealed by his disciple and biographer, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri.

Gokhale was born in 1866, in Kotluk village, Ratnagiri district, present-day Maharashtra, India. Coming from a modest Chitpavan Brahmin family, he pursued his education at Rajaram College in Kolhapur and later at Deccan College in Pune, where he graduated in 1884. He was among the first generation of Indians to receive a Western-style education, which deeply influenced his political and social outlook.

After completing his studies, Gokhale began his career as a professor at Fergusson College in Pune, where he taught for nearly two decades. In the early 1890s, he became actively involved in politics, joining the Indian National Congress in 1899. He quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the leading moderate leaders, advocating for gradual political reforms through dialogue with the British. In 1905, he was elected president of the Indian National Congress.

Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society in 1905 to promote education, social reform, and political training among Indians. He was also a member of the Imperial Legislative Council from 1902 to 1915, where he pushed for administrative reforms, free primary education, and reduced government expenditure on military affairs. He traveled to England in 1905 and 1912 to advocate Indian political interests and was instrumental in influencing the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909.

Gokhale never married, dedicating his life entirely to public service. He played a crucial role as a mentor to Mahatma Gandhi, who regarded him as a political guide. Gokhale’s health declined in his later years due to overwork and stress, and he died on 19 February 1915, aged only 48. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Enyclopaedia Britannica, and National Indian Congress.

Although Gokhale did not keep a diary - and his biographer tells us why - he did, as a young man, write one significant diary entry. This is included in V. S. Srinivasa Sastri’s The Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (as published by the Bangalore Printing and Publishing Co. in 1937 - freely available at Internet Archive). Sastri was a close associate and disciple of Gokhale, indeed he succeeded Gokhale as president of the Servants of India Society.

The following is taken directly from Sastri’s biography:

‘This thing that I am going to read to you is from the diary where [Gokhale] occasionally recorded his thoughts. I must tell you, parenthetically, that he never maintained a diary. He asked us, his followers too, never to do so. Do you know why? Just at the time when the Society was started, the whole of India was in political ferment, and a part of the activities of Government was the institution of enquiries of all sorts into the conduct of young men, especially those who enrolled themselves as members of public bodies and went about for public service. In many political prosecutions, the diaries of the unhappy accused had been taken as evidence against them (laughter). So he told us, “though you will be perfectly innocent, something you write may bring, it may be, other public workers into jeopardy. Well, we cannot afford to keep diaries.”

I hope to make the significance of this note from Gokhale’s diary clear, as regards a certain phase of Mr. Gokhale’s inner life. Always he looked into himself, examined his conduct in the light of great principles and ideals; and it is said that if he had done wrong, nobody could have castigated him more severely than himself. If he had done right, nobody was more ready to give credit to those who had inspired him and look upon successes as stepping stones to obtain greater opportunities of service. Soon after this humiliation of the apology, he examined himself in this way and made resolutions, which he committed to paper in a certain document which I mean to read to you, only saying beforehand that you must listen to it with the respect, in fact reverence, due to a man’s ideals at the time when he was suffering most acutely, living as it were in the very presence of the Most High and desiring nothing so much as to make his life an instrument of God’s will and an instrument for public welfare under His guidance. 

This is what I found amongst his intimate papers. It is dated 5th February 1893:

“By the grace of Sree Guru Dattatreya, I will endeavour humbly but firmly, to acquire or achieve the following: 

1) I will practise Yoga regularly. 

2) I will acquire a good knowledge of (a) History - Ancient and Modern. (b) Philosophy - Ancient and Modern. (c) Astronomy. (d) Geology. (e) Physiology. (f) Psychology. Now, no more “ology”. (g) French.

3. I will try to become a Member of :—

(а) The Bombay Legislative Council.

(b) The Supreme Legislative Council.

(c) The British Parliament.

In all these assemblies I will try to do good to my country by all means in my power.

4) I will try to become a preacher of the highest philosophical religion and I will preach this religion to the whole world.” ’

A scholar of the Orient

‘His Excellency’s brother was, accompanied by some gentlemen, to visit the Baile of Venice, whom he found very badly housed at the foot of a minaret, exposed to the importunate cry of the Muezzin. He complained wrongly that the Bachas had asked him, some for soaps, others for glasses and Venetian mirrors, to which honesty wanted him to give satisfaction, without daring nevertheless civilly to take the money that was offered to him.’ This is from the diaries of Antoine Galland, a French orientalist, archaeologist and translator, who died 310 years ago today. He is best remembered for introducing One Thousand and One Nights to the European world.

Galland was born on 1646, in Rollot, a small village in the province of Picardy, France. His father, a labourer, died when Antoine was young. Despite financial hardships, Galland showed academic promise, which led to his education at the Collège de Noyon and later the Collège de Plessis in Paris. His aptitude for languages was recognised early, and he developed a strong proficiency in Latin and Greek before expanding his studies to Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. His passion for the East was further nurtured by professor Pierre-Daniel Huet, an influential orientalist who guided Galland’s studies in philology and antiquities.

Galland’s career took shape when he was appointed as an assistant to the French ambassador in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1670. This opportunity allowed him to travel extensively through the Ottoman Empire, Syria, and the Levant, collecting manuscripts, coins, and other artefacts. His deep engagement with Middle Eastern culture and literature distinguished him as a scholar of the Orient. Upon returning to France, he worked as an interpreter and librarian, earning a position as a royal antiquary under Jean-Baptiste Colbert. He was responsible for cataloging and studying Eastern manuscripts, particularly those housed in the Bibliothèque Royale (now the National Library of France).

In 1704, Galland published the first volume of Les Mille et Une Nuits, based on Arabic manuscripts and oral sources. The translation captivated European audiences, introducing them to famous tales such as Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. These stories were not present in the known Arabic manuscripts and were likely added from oral traditions Galland encountered. His translation, completed in 1717, shaped how One Thousand and One Nights was perceived in Europe, blending Eastern storytelling with French literary tastes. It remains one of the most influential works of world literature.

There is little evidence that Galland married or had children. His life was largely devoted to scholarship and translation. He died on 17 February 1715, in Paris. Further information is available from Wikipedia, University of Kent or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Galland did keep personal diaries but all and any extracts from them have only been published in French. The most significant of the published diaries, I believe (my French being rather poor), is Journal d’Antoine Galland pendant son séjour a Constantinople (1672-1673) as edited by Charles Shefer and published by Ernest Leroux in 1881. This is readily available - in two tomes - to read at Internet Archive. There are also four volumes dating from the Parisian period in the last decade of his life, 1708-1715. Further publication details are available at the British Library website and at the Boswell Book Company.

For a flavour of these diaries, I have taken a few random extracts from the Constantinople period, and employed Google Translate to render them crudely into English, as follows.

14 April 1672

‘His Excellency’s brother was, accompanied by some gentlemen, to visit the Baile of Venice, whom he found very badly housed at the foot of a minaret, exposed to the importunate cry of the Muezzin. He complained wrongly that the Bachas had asked him, some for soaps, others for glasses and Venetian mirrors, to which honesty wanted him to give satisfaction, without daring nevertheless civilly to take the money that was offered to him.

A person said that he had been assured that the Venetians paid fifteen hundred ducats of tribute to the Grand Sgr, for the islands of Zante and Cephalonia.

I saw the ceremony of the blessing of the oil being performed, in the church of the Greeks and I heard part of the mass, of which the gospel was extremely long. It was taken from St. Matthew and began from the preparation of the Last Supper until the condemnation of Our Lady of Sorrow by Pilate. In a sermon by a Damascene Studite named for the day of Holy Saturday, I noticed at the end a little exhortation to prepare oneself to make a good and fruitful communion, for this reason that Jesus Christ is received therein entirely. It was among several others in the vulgar language by the same author for the whole year.’

19 April 1672

‘Mr. Panaioti came to see Mr. Ambassador on behalf of the Visir. Before he arrived, he sent one of his men to announce that he was coming. He came accompanied by five or six people on horseback; besides his harness, his also carried the sabre and the mace, and another of his retinue was loaded with a carpet, in the fashion of the great men of the country who use it to say their prayers when they are on the road, or to rest. It is to be believed that Mr. Panaioti did not wear it for the first reason, but for grandeur only and to rest in case he dismounted on the road. He did not wear a calpac but a Bey’s turban, by permission of the Visir, to serve as a safeguard and to protect him from all kinds of insults. He was quite a long time with His Excellency and Mr. d’Ervietix. He was treated to the usual wine and sorbet.’

21 April 1672

‘Mr. Ambassador received letters from Cairo, by which the Consul sent to His Excellency a certificate from the Patriarch of the Coptic, which was in Arabic, and another from the Patriarch of the Armenians with a report of the troops that were being sent to Mecca, both by sea and by land, to the number of three thousand men. What it contained in particular was that formerly in the country of Iemen, which is surrounded by mountains and which borders on Persia, the Grand Seigneur had a Bacha whom he sent there; but that for about twenty years one of them had revolted, having, to secure himself in his rebellion, persuaded the inhabitants that Mahomet and Hali were false prophets and having at the same time proposed to them another, for the religion of which they are ready to defend him vigorously. This report also assured His Excellency that around the month of February, there had fallen in Cairo such a heavy rain that people imagined it was the end of the world and that it should be noted as a very extraordinary accident in this country.’

22 July 1672

‘The Janissary that His Excellency had sent to the Porte arrived this day. He brought a command for the ship and four others for the four merchant ships; but the response to the letter that Mr. the Ambassador had sent was addressed to Caymacam. A Chiaoux sent from Caymacam came to testify to Mr. the Ambassador the part he took in the joy that His Excellency had for the birth of Mr. the Duke of Anjou and the victories of His Majesty. But it seems that he found fault with the noise and the brilliance with which she had appeared, saying that less could be done; but Mr. the Ambassador responded very vigorously.’

Day of brain fever

‘Today was a day of brain fever. I have decided to write a full length drama on Kalidas, before starting on the novel. Shall set about it tomorrow. Should complete it by the 21st.’ This is from the diary of Mohan Rakesh, a pioneer of modern Hindi literature, born a century ago today. Once written and produced, the work about Kalidas would soon become recognized as the first modern Hindi play.

Rakesh was born as Madan Mohan Guglani on 8 January 1925 in Amritsar (Punjab Province of British India). His father was a lawyer who died when he was 16. He studied for an MA in English and Hindi at Punjab University in Lahore, and earned the title of Shatri in Sanskrit. His professional journey included stints as a postman, teacher, and editor (of the literary journal Sarika) before he dedicated himself fully to writing in 1957.

As a writer, Rakesh excelled in multiple genres, particularly novels and plays. He is credited with writing the first modern Hindi play, Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1958) - about Kalidas, a classical Sanskrit author some claim is ancient India’s greatest poet and playwright. Indeed, Rakesh is also considered to have been one of the pioneers of the Nai Kahani (‘New Story’) Hindi literary movement. His writing often focused on the urban middle class, exploring their struggles and aspirations in post-independence India. His works are said to be characterised by their realistic portrayal of characters and their dilemmas, reflecting the changing social dynamics of the time.

Rakesh married three times: a first marriage in 1950 was arranged and ended in divorce in 1957; a second marriage, to Sudha in 1960, was also short-lived; and in 1963, he married 21 year-old Anita Aulakh. Throughout his career, Rakesh received several accolades, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1968. He died in 1972, aged only 47. However, his legacy continues to influence Hindi literature and theatre, with his plays still being performed and acclaimed worldwide. For further information see Wikipedia. 

Rakesh kept a diary for some years. Extracts from this were edited by Sudha and published posthumously as Mohan Rakesh Ki Diary (Rajpal & Sons, 1977). A more modern edition can be sampled online at Googlebooks. Although the bulk of the book is written in Hindi, there are a few passages in English. (Moreover, it is possible, these days, to produce a serviceable English translation by dragging and dropping images of the Hindi text into Google Translate.

22 January 1958

‘I do not know how I feel. Probably I am happy, very happy. M... came this morning, when I was working at my typewriter. She remained here for an hour or so. I said everything to her that I wanted to. She gave me her promise to marry me. I do not know how I feel about it. I feel terribly excited. The day had a real feel of spring in it. The grass looked more green than ever. I felt as if I were the master of the world. Love certainly is a positive sentiment, in spite of all the master of the cynicism of my friends. I love the young girl and it gave me intense pleasure to know that she has this same feeling for me. I am happy, for I took a few glasses of beer just now to enjoy my happiness. Oh! How nice and blissful I feel! I feel as if we are already married!’

9 February 1958

‘A week of hectic life in Delhi. Sharat’s marriage was the main event of the week. Met so many persons. Talked so many things. Returned very tired. Slept till eleven in the morning.

Today was a day of brain fever. I have decided to write a full length drama on Kalidas, before starting on the novel. Shall set about it tomorrow. Should complete it by the 21st.’

13 February 1958

‘Plans are ready for shifting to Delhi. 1st of March is the latest by when I should leave Jullundur. Staying here already seems like living in the past. But I had developed more attachments in this city than in any other city before. I shall carry with me many pleasant and unpleasant memories. And I shall never come back to live here.

I do not yet know what is going to be my major occupation for earning a livelihood in the days to come, writing does not provide a living. It may be anything, but I shall at no cost come back to have a job in this city. I shall try to write out the play on Kalidas during the days that I am here.’

16 February 1958


‘I felt suffocated - extremely so, living at Jullundur. I do not know why I am so sensitive to certain situations. Till yesterday, I was not sure if I shall travel to Delhi. Even till later this morning I did not know. Only felt a certain pain, a piercing agony right within my heart. I could not write. I could not read. I even could not imagine things. I felt as if my heart and brain were being eaten up by worms. I feel so terribly depressed. Now that I am sitting in a train, in the compartment next to the engine, the engine is whistling continuously, doing about 50 miles an hour, I feel if the oppressive burden is being slowly lifted. I like this terrible speed, this maddening push. I hope to feel light and happy in an hour's time.

I shall try to settle down in Delhi. I shall live there. I might probably die there. I am so tired of these shiftings, and yet I cannot help them. My whole system has been poisoned by the bitterness of circumstances. How long I have suffered and how much! Could I ever be relieved of this pain, this sorrow?

The train is going very fast. But I also feel lonely and desolate. How can I help it? As the train steams off from Ambala Cantt, the depression is over. 

New Delhi

A feeling like that of having slept well. A vague sensation of pleasant excitement. Wind is chilly. I feel that it is spring.

I like this mode of living. I like this life. Everything around seems to be pulsating with activity.

I cannot believe that I, myself, have been through all that suffering. I want to believe that it was not reality but a nightmare - a hallucination.’

Cloves, cumin, ginger

Vasco da Gama, the famous Portuguese explorer, died all of half a millennium ago today. Although he did not leave behind a diary of his own, an unknown author did keep a journal of da Gama’s first expedition to India. This was stored in a Portuguese convent for centuries, before being published in the 1860s, and then translated into English in the 1890s. It provides a rich and colourful account of the very earliest days of European attempts to colonise the sub-continent.

Da Gama was born in Sines, Portugal, around 1460. His father was Estêvão da Gama, commander of the local fort. In 1492, Vasco da Gama was sent by King John II to the south of the country to take revenge against the French, who had been seizing Portuguese ships. Meanwhile, Estêvão da Gama was chosen by the king to lead a Portuguese fleet to India in search of lucrative trade routes. However, both the king and Estêvão da Gama died, and the mission was handed to Vasco de Gama by the new King Manuel.

In 1497, da Gama sailed from Lisbon with four ships; he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and, with the aid of a pilot found on the east coast of Africa, sailed to the west coast of India, stopping at various ports, before reaching Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the Malabar coast. Unable to establish a colony because of opposition from the local Muslims, da Gama returned to Portugal, with a cargo of very profitable spices and the certain knowledge of a potential trade route. The mission was, thus, celebrated as a great success. Around 1500, he married Catarina de Ataíde who bore him six sons.

Vasco da Gama, by this time ranked as an admiral, undertook a second journey, in 1502, to try and secure the trading colony established in the interim by Pedro Carbal, but which had been wiped out in a massacre. He successfully laid siege to Calicut, and concluded favourable peace treaties with the native rulers. However, on his return, he felt inadequately rewarded, and became embroiled in an ongoing dispute concerning his ownership of the town of Sines (given him by the king in 1499, but still claimed by the Military Order of Santiago).

For some years after, da Gama lived a relatively quiet life. In 1519, he was appointed Count of Vidigueira; and, in 1524, after Manuel’s death, King John III appointed him as Portuguese Viceroy in India. He set sail for a third time, to try and restore administrative order to the Portuguese holdings. However, he fell ill at Cochin and died on 23 December 1524. Further information is available from Wikipedia, or from various out-of-copyright biographies available at Internet Archive, such as Vasco da Gama and his successors 1460-1580 by K. G. Jayne.

A diary account of da Gama’s first voyage - named Roteiro - survived over 300 years, and was first published in 1838. This was edited by Diogo Kopke and Dr. Antonio da Costa Paiva, both teachers at the Academia Polytechnica of Oporto, and funded by subscription. Only 392 copies were printed then, but a second edition appeared in Lisbon in 1861. A few years later, in 1869, the Hakluyt Society published Lord Stanley of Alderley’s translation of the Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and intended to bring out an English translation of the Roteiro, but this latter was left in abeyance for another three decades, until the Society published, in 1898, A journal of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1497-99 as translated and edited by E. G. Ravenstein. The book is freely available online at Internet Archive or Googlebooks.

Ravenstein notes, in his introduction, that the extant manuscript is not the original, but only a copy, and that the author of the original remains unknown. He explains: ‘The manuscript originally belonged to the famous Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, whence it was transferred, together with other precious manuscripts, to the public library of Oporto. [. . .] This copy, however, was taken in the beginning of the sixteenth century, as may be seen from the style of the writing. [. . .] It is quite possible, as suggested by Prof. Kopke, that the title by which the Roteiro was known at the convent of Santa Cruz misled certain bibliographers into a belief that Vasco da Gama himself had written this account of his voyage. [. . .] No one has yet succeeded in discovering the author of the Roteiro.’ Ravenstein adds that his translation is ‘literal and complete’. Here are a few extracts.

8 April 1497
‘On Palm Sunday the King of Mombaça sent the captain-major a sheep and large quantities of oranges, lemons and sugar-cane, together with a ring, as a pledge of safety, letting him know that in case of his entering the port he would be supplied with all he stood in need of. This present was conveyed to us by two men, almost white, who said they were Christians, which appeared to be the fact. The captain-major sent the king a string of coral-beads as a return present, and let him know that he purposed entering the port on the following day. On the same day the captain-major’s vessel was visited by four Moors of distinction.

Two men were sent by the captain-major to the king, still further to confirm these peaceful assurances. When these landed they were followed by a crowd as far as the gates of the palace. Before reaching the king they passed through four doors, each guarded by a doorkeeper with a drawn cutlass. The king received them hospitably, and ordered that they should be shown over the city. They stopped on their way at the house of two Christian merchants, who showed them a paper (carta), an object of their adoration, on which was a sketch of the Holy Ghost. When they had seen all, the king sent them back with samples of cloves, pepper and corn, with which articles he would allow us to load our ships.’

10 April 1497
‘On Tuesday, when weighing anchor to enter the port, the captain-major’s vessel would not pay off, and struck the vessel which followed astern. We therefore again cast anchor. When the Moors who were in our ship saw that we did not go on, they scrambled into a zavra attached to our stern; whilst the two pilots whom we had brought from Moçambique jumped into the water, and were picked up by the men in the zavra. At night the captain-major “questioned” two Moors whom we had on board, by dropping boiling oil upon their skin, so that they might confess any treachery intended against us. They said that orders had been given to capture us as soon as we entered the port, and thus to avenge what we had done at Moçambique. And when this torture was being applied a second time, one of the Moors, although his hands were tied, threw himself into the sea, whilst the other did so during the morning watch.

About midnight two almadias, with many men in them, approached. The almadias stood off whilst the men entered the water, some swimming in the direction of the Berrio others in that of the Raphael. Those who swam to the Berrio began to cut the cable. The men on watch thought at first that they were tunny fish, but when they perceived their mistake they shouted to the other vessels. The other swimmers had already got hold of the rigging of the mizzen-mast. Seeing themselves discovered, they silently slipped down and fled. These and other wicked tricks were practised upon us by these dogs, but our Lord did not allow them to succeed, because they were unbelievers.

Mombaça is a large city seated upon an eminence washed by the sea. Its port is entered daily by numerous vessels. At its entrance stands a pillar, and by the sea a low-lying fortress.Those who had gone on shore told us that in the town they had seen many men in irons; and it seemed to us that these must be Christians, as the Christians in that country are at war with the Moors.

The Christian merchants in the town are only temporary residents, and are held in much subjection, they not being allowed to do anything except by the order of the Moorish King.

It pleased God in his mercy that on arriving at this city all our sick recovered their health, for the climate (“air”) of this place is very good.

After the malice and treachery planned by these dogs had been discovered, we still remained on Wednesday and Thursday.’

17 April 1497
‘We approached nearer to the town [Malindi, now Kenya]. The king sent the captain-major six sheep, besides quantities of cloves, cumin, ginger, nutmeg and pepper, as also a message, telling him that if he desired to have an interview with him he (the king) would come out in his zavra when the captain-major could meet him in a boat.’

18 April 1497
‘On Wednesday, after dinner, when the king came up close to the ships in a zavra, the captain-major at once entered one of his boats, which had been well furnished, and many friendly words were exchanged when they lay side by side. The king having invited the captain-major to come to his house to rest, after which he (the king) would visit him on board his ship, the captain-major said that he was not permitted by his master to go on land, and if he were to do so a bad report would be given of him. The king wanted to know what would be said of himself by his people if he were to visit the ships, and what account could he render them? He then asked for the name of our king, which was written down for him, and said that on our return he would send an ambassador with us, or a letter.

When both had said all they desired, the captain-major sent for the Moors whom he had taken prisoner, and surrendered them all. This gave much satisfaction to the king, who said that he valued this act more highly than if he had been presented with a town. And the king, much pleased, made the circuit of our ships, the bombards of which fired a salute. About three hours were spent in this way. When the king went away he left in the ship one of his sons and a sharif, and took two of us away with him, to whom he desired to show his palace. He, moreover, told the captain that as he would not go ashore he would himself return on the following day to the beach, and would order his horsemen to go through some exercises.

The king wore a robe (royal cloak) of damask trimmed with green satin, and a rich touca. He was seated on two cushioned chairs of bronze, beneath a round sunshade of crimson satin attached to a pole. An old man, who attended him as page, carried a short sword in a silver sheath. There were many players on anafils, and two trumpets of ivory, richly carved, and of the size of a man, which were blown from a hole in the side, and made sweet harmony with the anafils.’

19 April 1497
‘On Thursday the captain-major and Nicolau Coelho rowed along the front of the town, bombards having been placed in the poops of their long-boats. Many people were along the shore, and among them two horsemen, who appeared to take much delight in a sham-fight. The king was carried in a palanquin from the stone steps of his palace to the side of the captain-major’s boats. He again begged the captain to come ashore, as he had a helpless father who wanted to see him, and that he and his sons would go on board the ships as hostages. The captain, however, excused himself.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 23 December 2014.