Last night’s hurricane

‘Wind more moderate, but still blowing hard from opposite shore. On every hand are traces of last night’s hurricane. [. . .] It is with little hope of ever seeing his boat again - except in separate pieces - that the captain finds his way along the road to the vineyard which was the scene of so much adventure last evening.’ This is from a diary kept by Donald Maxwell, an English writer and illustrator who died 90 years ago today. In 1904-1905, he had a small yacht built - The Griffin -  and then undertook an extraordinary journey, sailing through Europe, eventually, to England.

Maxwell was born in Clapham, London, in 1877. He was the son of the Methodist minister and schoolmaster Frederick Charles Maxwell and grew up in an artistic family; his mother was also an illustrator and his younger brother Gordon Maxwell likewise became an author and artist. Maxwell studied at the Clapham School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art, training that underpinned both his illustrations and his career as a painter.

Maxwell established himself before the First World War as a prolific travel writer and illustrator, contributing regularly to The Yachting Monthly, The Graphic and the Daily Graphic. His books, nearly all illustrated by himself, recorded journeys across Britain, Europe and the Middle East with a combination of careful observation, architectural interest and understated humour. During the First World War he served as an official Admiralty artist, later drawing on those experiences in The Last Crusade, 1914-1918 and A Dweller in Mesopotamia. He also accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour of India in 1921-22, producing another illustrated travel narrative.

In the 1920s Maxwell became particularly associated with books celebrating the English landscape and historic towns, including his popular ‘Unknown’ county series on Kent, Sussex, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, together with works on London and the landscape of Thomas Hardy. His paintings of British scenery were widely admired and reproduced, several later appearing as railway carriage prints, while he also illustrated books by writers including Hilaire Belloc and Rudyard Kipling. He died on 25 July 1936. Further information is available from Wikipedia.

In 1904 Maxwell had a small yacht, The Griffin, built at Brunnadern in north-eastern Switzerland, then he hauled it overland to the headwaters of the Rhine before setting off alone on a voyage that carried him from the Swiss Alps to the Thames. The journey followed rivers, lakes and canals through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands before crossing the North Sea and entering the Thames estuary, eventually reaching Teddington in 1905.

The text of the diary and drawings he entered in a notebook were first published as The Log of the Griffin, by John Lane: The Bodley Head, in London in 1905. The volume was well received and established the formula Maxwell would employ throughout much of his career: a lightly worn, observant travel diary in which words and drawings carry equal weight. The work has since been reprinted in later editions and remains one of Maxwell’s best-known books, valued both as an engaging travel narrative and as a record of early twentieth-century inland waterways and landscapes.

2 October 1904

‘Schmerikon to Lachen. There is a very faint breeze from the direction of Uznach, and The Griffin, at 7.45 a.m., moves out of the harbour under mainsail only. It will be risky to carry more canvas with only one on board, for the wind is very treacherous in these waters, and it is quite common in certain states of the atmosphere to be calmed one minute and the next to be taking in sail for dear life and running with bare mast before the squall. Thus everything must be under easy control in case of emergencies, when a moment’s unreadiness would be fatal - at least for the boat.

Herr Wirth comes aboard for about half a mile, and is landed a little way out of Schmerikon, taking leave of the captain with hearty wishes for a “Gute Reise!” He stands some time looking proudly after the craft he has built, which is making a course for the middle of the lake in the hope that the breeze there will be fresher. But when the village is nearly out of sight, the wind dies down altogether, and The Griffin remains motionless on a surface unruffled. The sun is blazing, but there is a coppery colour about it that looks suspicious, and there is blue sky where the mountains ought to be.

Hour after hour passes, and there is no change. However, it is by no means unpleasant. It is a relief to be quite alone after having been for some time the centre of a sort of show, and it is not half so formidable to steer a ship through the known dangers of wind and sea as to face the unknown difficulties of a Toggenburg village.

A good opportunity, too, it proves, for drying several articles which suffered from the water last night; these are spread on the roof of the cabin, which by this time is quite hot. It is encouraging to find, also, in baling the boat, that the amount of water getting through is growing perceptibly less. The captain takes his field-glasses and has a look round, although little more than the immediate shore of the lake is visible. Astern, near the entrance to the Linth canal, the square tower of Schloss Grynau is to be seen, and to the right of that the woods of Ober-Buchberg slope down towards the water. Ahead there is a faint group of towers, probably Rapperswyl, and to the left of them stretches a long low shore of swamp land, covered with tall grasses which extend in patches out into the lake. Lachen can just be discerned over this waste, and it is there that the captain wishes to find shelter, if possible, for the night, by means of an hour or two’s paddling.

It is not until the sun has set that The Griffin enters the little harbour. It has been very slow work, mile after mile in a dead calm, along the lonely shore, in silence broken only by the monotonous noise of the paddle or the melancholy cry of some startled wild-bird.’

5 October 1904

‘Meilen, morning. Wind more moderate, but still blowing hard from opposite shore. On every hand are traces of last night’s hurricane. Branches of trees are scattered about in the road, and many of the shrubs in boxes at the entrance of the hotel are on their sides in a helpless condition. A steamer has been wrecked at Rapperswyl and another found, broken loose from her moorings, drifting about with no one on board. It is therefore hardly to be expected that The Griffin will be recognizable, considering the fact that she must have been tossed up and down on the stony shore all night. Consequently, it is with little hope of ever seeing his boat again - except in separate pieces - that the captain finds his way along the road to the vineyard which was the scene of so much adventure last evening.

Encouraged and surprised at seeing a mast still appearing over the vines, he scales the wall and climbs down to the lake. The Griffin has been washed up, half out of the water, and wedged in between two large stones. Her bow seems at first sight to have been badly knocked about. Luckily it is where sheet-iron covers it, and it proves on further inspection, although seriously dinted and devoid of paint, to have sustained no structural damage. The wood of the rudder, where it comes below the iron frame, has been torn off, but this will make little difference. If anything, there was a little too much depth before, and as the ironwork will prevent any further tearing away, it is perhaps on the whole an improvement. One of the lee-boards is somewhat bent. These injuries, together with the loss of nearly all the paint on her hull, seem to be the only changes in the craft since yesterday. The well is full, but very little water has found its way into the cabin. The carpenters of Brunnadern have done their work well indeed. Any ordinary boat, even one built for strength, would have been matchwood by now, after last night’s churning up and down on the rocks. The skin of The Griffin is of one-inch planks, each dovetailed to the other with strips of steel. The ribs are two inches thick, and eight of them have three-quarter-inch wrought-iron bars fashioned to fit them all round, so that the hull is a veritable tower of strength against a crushing force from without. Last night has proved this.

The captain calls at the house of his rescuers to thank them for their kindness and apologize for his interruption of their musical evening. He finds it rather difficult to put his sentiments into intelligible form. The part that expresses gratitude is understood at once, but the meaning of his apology for the breaking up of the domestic concert is totally missed. They take it that he is referring to some instrument, and cannot understand what it has to do with the case. Probably they think he would like to hear a tune on the mandoline. Whether this is a correct guess as to their deductions or not, the mandoline that figured in last night’s scene is brought out, and the captain is entertained to a song well sung and tolerably well accompanied, of which he shows immense appreciation. He insists on several encores, by this means making up to some extent for inability to express himself clearly, and establishing most friendly relations with the whole household.

New wine and large pears, an extraordinary alliance, are produced by way of refreshment, and the captain is presented with a card on which is inscribed - Jean Bucher, Maler, Meilen, giving his own in exchange and explaining - for his knowledge of a few words of German tells him what “maler” stands for - that he also is a painter. Encouraged by this additional bond of sympathy, his host takes him all round the house, and shows him certain paintings of his own, executed in hours of relaxation from his sterner moments of professional work. The captain makes the moderately truthful statement that he has seldom seen pictures like them, and points out that the wind has now gone down considerably, so that he ought to be starting.

Herr Bucher will not allow him to leave without first making him accept as a present an enormous pear, and he accompanies him to the spot where the unfortunate Griffin is stranded. It is a cold task, standing in the shallow water and levering the boat inch by inch further into the lake until she is afloat again.’

I want rest

‘My work at F.O. is nearly over, and not to my regret: much of it was interesting, but the constant interruption and disturbance from visitors, the tendency of diplomatists to waste time in unnecessary talk, the impossibility, at this time of year, of getting air and exercise without neglecting official duty, and the difficulty of escaping, even for a few hours, from telegrams and despatches, make the post trying to health and temper. I want rest, and feel that I want it.’ This is from the diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, a British statesman born 200 years ago today, who served twice as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

Stanley was born at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire, the eldest son of Edward Smith-Stanley, the future 14th Earl of Derby, three times prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, and Emma Caroline Bootle-Wilbraham. Raised in one of Britain’s wealthiest political families, he was educated at Eton, Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class degree in classics and became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the influential intellectual society. He entered Parliament in 1848 as MP for King’s Lynn while still in his early twenties.

Stanley rapidly established himself as a capable administrator. He served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Colonial Secretary, President of the Board of Control, and in 1858 became the inaugural Secretary of State for India following the transfer of power from the East India Company to the Crown after the Indian Rebellion. He was twice Foreign Secretary, first under his father and then under Benjamin Disraeli, and later returned to government as Colonial Secretary in Gladstone’s Liberal administration after breaking with the Conservatives over foreign policy. His political journey from Conservative to Liberal and finally Liberal Unionist reflected his independence of mind on questions of diplomacy and empire.

In 1870, Stanley married Lady Mary Sackville-West, daughter of the 5th Earl De La Warr and widow of the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury. The marriage produced no children. He succeeded to the earldom on his father’s death in 1869 (becoming Lord Derby) and thereafter divided his time between national politics and the management of the extensive Knowsley estates. His health declined after an attack of influenza in 1891, and he died at Knowsley in 1893, aged 63. The title passed to his younger brother, Frederick Stanley, later Governor General of Canada and the donor of the trophy that became the Stanley Cup. Further information is available from Wikipedia. 

Derby’s diaries have become an indispensable primary source for historians of Victorian politics, cabinet government and foreign policy. They have been extensively cited by later scholars, including Geoffrey Hicks, whose Documents on Conservative Foreign Policy, 1852-1878 uses them repeatedly alongside the correspondence of Disraeli and other ministers.

The first substantial publication came with Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849-1869, edited by John Vincent, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol, and published by Harvester Press in 1978 (freely available online at Internet Archive). It was followed by A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826-93), Between September 1869 and March 1878 (Royal Historical Society, 1994), and The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826-93) Between 1878 and 1893: A Selection (Leopard’s Head Press, 2003). Together these three editions make available material spanning more than four decades of Stanley’s political life. Here are several extracts from the first publication.

6 July 1866

‘Friday. Went down to Windsor to be sworn in. . . . Appointed a Mr Sanderson my private secretary.

It is not likely that I shall be able to continue this diary further.

My first official act was, with the consent of Ld D, to telegraph to Florence and Berlin supporting the French proposition of an armistice.’

7 July 1866

‘(Saturday). Restless, up early, hard at work from 8.30 to near 6.30, and again two hours after dinner. Dined Travellers. Cabinet at 3, sat 1½ hour: subjects: supply of needle-guns, Fenians in Canada, a sergeant of one of the Irish regts convicted of treason, whom Sir H. Rose wants to shoot, and whose life I think we saved: foreign affairs, and winding-up of the session.

. . . Cleared the office, having neither letter unanswered nor paper unread when I left off.

Before taking office I wrote to Ld Cowley entreating him to remain at Paris - which he consents to do for the present, though making a favour of it. I have not an idea how he could be effectually replaced. Though not a man of first-rate talent, he knows the country and the people thoroughly, and can be relied on. Moreover, as the place is one not given exclusively to professional diplomatists, there will be a great scramble for it, and many attempts to get it jobbed for the interest of the party.’

8 July 1866

‘Sunday. Hatfield for the morning, where met Lowe. . . . Carnarvon was to have come, but was too busy. . . . No business, except reading up memoranda of subjects now being dealt with at F.O. Pleasant day.’

9 July 1866

‘Busy all day from 8 a.m. At 2 the ministers came according to custom, and were received by me in state. (Levee dress.) About 22 appeared successively. The audience lasted three hours. . . . La Tour d’Auvergne frank and straightforward in his ways: Azeglio more than half an Englishman. Altogether I like the diplomatists better than I had expected to do. Very weary at night.

. . . We learn that Prussia accepts the armistice on conditions. . . . Bulow hopes in the general scramble to get back at least Schleswig in a Congress. Musurus greatly afraid that compensation to Austria will be proposed at expense of Turkey. - I reassure him on that point.

Azeglio believes the Italians would consent to leave the Pope Rome with sovereign power and dignity, provided the territory round it, now held by him, were taken away. This is exactly the compromise I have always suggested.

Italians refuse Venetia as a French gift, and want a piece of the Austrian Tyrol. The fact is, they do not like to leave off beaten, nor to owe anything to France, and they are afraid of French demands. . . . Emp. has protested that he wants no addition of territory. . . . It may be so, but Savoy and Nice recur to the mind.’

7 December 1868

‘. . . La Tour called, uneasy, and reasonably so, at the expected rupture between Greece and Turkey: the Porte having announced that unless the laws of neutrality are better observed in future, and certain definite concessions made, they will break off diplomatic relations, close the ports against Greek ships, and give subjects of Greece notice to quit Turkey. This ultimatum however is not to be sent until Saturday, and it is hoped that meanwhile Greece will give way. In the actual situation of the government, it is difficult to see what can be done: but after consultation with Hammond, considering the urgency of the case, I framed a telegram of warning and advice to the Greek government, which pledges the F.O. to nothing, and may possibly be of some use. It is however on the cards that objection may be taken to my having said anything, when de facto I have ceased to be a minister.

. . . My work at F.O. is nearly over, and not to my regret: much of it was interesting, but the constant interruption and disturbance from visitors, the tendency of diplomatists to waste time in unnecessary talk, the impossibility, at this time of year, of getting air and exercise without neglecting official duty, and the difficulty of escaping, even for a few hours, from telegrams and despatches, make the post trying to health and temper. I want rest, and feel that I want it.

. . . Dined Travellers, where much talk with Lord Clarendon on F.O. matters.’

9 December 1868

‘. . . Windsor by special train . . . Council held, after which we severally gave up our seals. The Queen very civil to me, said ‘she was sorry to take them back, they had never been in better hands.’

Emperor’s breast

‘The Emperor blubber itself has a very delicate flavour. As a treat this morning Campbell gave us each a small strip of Emperor’s breast done as a filet-de-boeuf, with a small piece of fat on top, and it was an excellent change after the unvarying stews we have had for months.’ This is Raymond Priestley, born 140 years ago today, writing in his diary while holed up in Antartica with the so-called Northern Party of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. The Northern Party survived two winters in the region, and Priestley went on to become a highly respected university administrator, and to maintain his diary habit all his working life.

Priestley was born on 20 July 1886 into a Methodist family in Tewkesbury, England. His father was headmaster of the local grammar school. While studying geology at Bristol university he was recruited to Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition to Antartica (1907-1909). He was also a member of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition in 1910-1912, and subsequently wrote Antarctic Adventure. He entered Cambridge University, but when the war intervened, he served as adjutant at the Wireless Training Centre, and then with the 46th divisional signal company in France. During the war, he married Phyllis Mary, and they had two daughters. 

After the war, Priestley completed his studies, and wrote several books: Breaking the Hindenburg Line, The Work of the Royal Engineers, 1914-19: the Signal Service, and a work on glaciology. He also helped set up the Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge in 1920.

From the 1930s, Priestley held a series of academic and government administrative posts in England, and then in Australia, in particular becoming Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne (1935-1938), and then Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University (1938-1952). In 1944, he spent several months in the West Indies with a committee from the UK tasked with investigating the possibility of setting up a university in the region. He was knighted in 1949, and retired in 1952, but continued to work in different capacities (including, for example, being president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1961 to 1963). He died in 1974. Further information can be found at the Australian Dictionary of National Biography, University of Birmingham or Wikipedia.

Priestley kept a diary throughout his life, from his Antarctic expedition days to his chancellorship of Birmingham University. He based his first book - Antarctic Adventure - on the diary he kept while with Scott’s expedition. Published by Fisher Unwin in 1914, this is freely available online at Internet Archive. Although Priestley says, about half way through the narrative, that he has tried to avoid the diary form as much as possible, he then says ‘it is impossible to give a lifelike description of our routine, our thoughts, and our feelings during this abnormal life without the help of some extracts from the records written at the time’. Thereafter, he quotes liberally from his own diary.

The diaries Priestley kept while in Australia were published by Melbourne University Press in 1998 and again in 2002 as The Diary of a Vice-Chancellor: University of Melbourne 1935-1938. An excellent and detailed summary of all 14 of Priestley’s diaries held by Birmingham University, from 1938-1954, can be found on the university’s website, as can a photograph of one of the manuscript diaries. Furthermore, The University of the West Indies website offers two links to the text of a diary Priestley kept in 1944 while visiting the region (but they don’t ever seemed to have worked!)

Here, though, are several extracts from Priestley’s diary as found in Antarctic Adventure.

22 February 1912
‘The worst of a wind is that you can do nothing to it. If you are being annoyed by a man or an animal bigger than yourself, you can at least get on the other side of a fence and throw stones at him or it, but here we are hung up by an infernally cold wind and able to do nothing against it whatever, while it is gradually tearing our tent in pieces. We are all getting less physically fit and feeling the cold more, and this is showing itself by the continual presence of cold feet, and by constant attacks of cramp in different parts of the body. It is to be hoped that the ship is all serene and not blown out north by the wind. Before the gale commenced Levick and Abbott reported that they saw a trail of smoke off the ice tongue, and we therefore think that she may be sheltering in Relief Inlet, but at times like this all of us have strong imaginations. We are all suffering very much, and myself in particular, from an almost intolerable itching of the feet when circulation is restored after they have been very cold. The barometer isn’t much use to us nowadays. As far as I can make out if it goes up it means the gale is going to be stronger, if it goes down the wind is going to increase. When the barometer remains steady the gale remains steady too. Cheerful, isn’t it?’

7 May 1912
‘While still in bed this morning we heard the gale blowing hard outside, and when we got up we found we were snowed in as we have never been before. During the morning Dickason and I tunnelled through the drift and have managed thus to extend the roof of the shaft for about 6 feet in length. We found a regular hurricane outside, but no drift. Levick and Browning have butchered three of the Emperors, and Campbell and Abbott have therefore been cooking under great difficulties, for the galley is full of meat and carcasses, and there is a bad backdraught down the chimney. We had a lot of Emperor penguin meat and blubber in the hoosh to-night. The meat has been a great success, but the blubber has made the gravy pure oil, and has beaten some of us, though I am thankful to say not myself. The Emperor blubber itself has a very delicate flavour. As a treat this morning Campbell gave us each a small strip of Emperor’s breast done as a filet-de-boeuf, with a small piece of fat on top, and it was an excellent change after the unvarying stews we have had for months. I am reading my diary of last year in monthly parts for the amusement of the company. We all find an especial, though a tantalizing pleasure in the few descriptions of meals I have entered as part of our routine at Cape Adare. We still feel the monotonous diet, but are otherwise quite reconciled to our fate.

The cave is keeping quite warm at present, and of course the insulation is much improved by each wind with drift. All the sea ice beyond the bay has gone out again, and the Drygalski Ice Tongue and the moraines are hidden by dense drift, which is just missing us except in the strongest gusts. Dickason and I were both blown down once or twice when we were standing at the entrance to the shaft.’

25 May 1912
‘Westerly wind with heavy drift continues, and we have been drifted up all day. This afternoon we had to do away with the blubber fires because of the smitch, for the drift kept on filling the chimney and preventing the draught from flowing. Afterwards Dickason started the hoosh over the primus, and this rapidly used up our limited supply of oxygen. First of all the reading-lamps went out and refused to be lighted with a flaring spill, and then the spill went out and could not be relighted at the primus. Next the primus went out and could not be relighted because the matches would not burn. By this time we were opening up the chimney and the drift at the entrance to the shaft, and Campbell drove his ice-axe through the latter with immediate relief to everybody. Since then things have gone pretty well, but we all have had bad headaches, which we had put down to the smitch, but which were more probably due directly to lack of oxygen. It is a great nuisance this new danger having arisen after we thought we had avoided the utmost malice of the weather, but it is lucky we were not caught at night and all asphyxiated in our beds. I suppose that the coating of ice which has formed on the inside of the snow-roof has spoiled the ventilation. After dinner Campbell and Abbot cleared the drift from the mouth of the shaft and pushed the flagstaff down the chimney.’

14 June 1912
‘Half a gale blowing. Clear, and stars shining. Another day in bed. Rather smitchier than usual. We have just had a word who should go out and clear the chimney and cut away a projecting piece of sealskin in our passage roof which is a constant menace to our eyes and noses, and which has perhaps been the cause of more hasty language than any other individual thing about the camp. I have not yet mentioned one essential portion of our equipment - the toothpick. Campbell is the only member of the party who still possesses a toothbrush, and the present diet is eminently suited to cause the collection of small shreds of meat between our teeth. In spite of this we are able to keep them in as good condition as we can at home by the judicious use of bamboo toothpicks with sharp points to remove the meat and of pieces of soft wood to rub the front of the teeth. These latter instruments are made from the white wood of the Fry’s chocolate boxes, and their blunt chisel ends are moistened and chewed first to secure pliability. They are rather better than a toothbrush. The hard biscuit, of course, looks after the grinding surfaces for us. I think at present that I am looking forward to a good bath and a clean up as much as I am to a good meal of bread, butter, and jam, which is saying a good deal. Another tin of oil was finished this morning. We have every reason to be satisfied with the oil consumption, which is becoming less and less, while Dickason watches over his primus like a hen over her chickens. The men are just finishing off their private sewing, and then they start work on their tents. The day after one has been messman is always the pleasantest of the three, for one feels one has earned the right to a day in bed.

To-day has been a great day of controversies. First Levick and myself found ourselves at variance about the chocolate ration, and the amount of chocolate left at Cape Adare. The second argument was whether or not one of the expedition fruit-cakes would freeze at spring sledging temperatures, and this was followed by two lengthy battles between Campbell and Levick on points of national ethics and imperial politics respectively. Finally we had a three-cornered battle as to which is the most economical and soul-satisfying way of eating one’s single biscuit. We are all three set in our own way: Campbell eats his at breakfast, Levick part at breakfast and part in each hoosh, and myself part when I feel the want of it, about midday or a little earlier, and part at dinner.’

6 July 1912
‘The worst of our day as messman is the infernal crick we get in our backs from never being able to stand upright. Mine is at present aching terribly, but the pain soon passes off in our bags.

Levick is too broad for our inner door, and we have just spent an amusing five minutes watching his attempts to get through with a joint of meat in one hand and a cooker in the other. Luckily, as a rule we run to slimness, and no one else has much trouble.

The atmosphere is becoming tolerable again, but we have ruined the pure white of the roof and wall until a few more smitchless days enable pure crystals to form over the dirty ones.

Browning has slight indigestion and Dickason has complained of a bad stitch in his side, but otherwise we are in excellent health.

We are running out of penguins and of bones for the fire, and shall be short of sea ice in a day or two, so I hope for fine weather, for the penguins especially make all the difference between palatable and monotonous hooch.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 20 July 2016.

The Arabian Diaries

Gertrude Bell, an early 20th century British traveller and archaeology enthusiast, died 100 years ago today. Her expertise in the Middle East led her to become a key player in the formation of Iraq after WWI. Diaries she kept through many of her adventures were eventually given to Newcastle University which has made them freely available online. Starting just before the war, she reshaped her diary entries for sending to a British army officer with whom she was in love, and these have been published as The Arabian Diaries.

Gertrude Bell was born in 1869, into a wealthy north-of-England family. Her mother died when she was just three, but her father married again - to Florence, a writer - when she was seven. Gertrude was educated at Queen’s College in London and then at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, achieving a first in history. Thereafter, she journeyed in Europe and also spent several months in Bucharest and in Tehran, where her uncle was British representative. Her travels continued with two round-the-world trips, one in 1897-1898 and one in 1902-1903.

Bell travelled widely in the Middle East, learning Arabic, meeting many Arab tribal leaders and investigating archaeological sites. She published several travel/archaelogy books, such as Syria: The Desert and the Sown; and she also collaborated with T. E. Lawrence. British Intelligence recruited her during the WWI, and subsequently, with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, she was appointed Oriental Secretary to the High Commissioner in Baghdad, where she was an important influence in the creation of modern Iraq, and in the naming of Faisal, the recently deposed King of Syria, as first King of Iraq. As Honorary Director of Antiquities in Iraq, she established the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. She died on 12 July 1826 from an overdose of sleeping pills, though whether this was an accident or a deliberate act has never been established. She never married, though had a close relationship during the war with Charles Doughty-Wylie. Further information can be found at Wikipedia or The Guardian.

Most of Bell’s letters and diaries (1877-1919) were given by her half sister to Newcastle University, which hosts a dedicated Gertrude Bell website, including transcribed copies of her diaries.

Some extracts from Bell’s diaries were edited by Rosemary O’Brien and published by Syracuse University Press in 2000 as Gertrude Bell - The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914 (see Googlebooks). However, although Bell’s diaries are published therein, O’Brien says the centrepiece of her book are, what she calls, the ‘Doughty-Wylie Diaries’. She explains: ‘It was Bell’s custom to record her journeys in small notebooks and to sift through them afterward when drafting private reports, articles, or books. On the Arabian trip, however, she kept parallel records: Two notebooks were eventually filled with daily entries, which, cited as “Diaries,” appear without revisions as appendixes to this volume. A third notebook contains a brilliant reshaping of the daily entry material, written for Charles Hotham Montague (Dick) Doughty-Wylie, a British army officer with whom Gertrude Bell was in love.’

The publisher offers this blurb: ‘The fundamental themes of her life - reckless behaviour; a divided self which combined brilliance of intellect with a passionate nature; a sense of history; and the fatal gift of falling in love with a married man - are all here in remarkable detail.’

The following extracts are taken from The Arabian Diaries: the first three come from the ‘diaries’ contained in the book’s appendices, and the fourth comes from the main part of the book, i.e. what O’Brien calls the ‘Doughty-Wylie Diaries’.

18 December 1913
‘Fine, cold, snow on the hills. We took 2 hrs 20 min. to get off. Left at 8.35 and had an hour’s bad struggle through the muddy zera’ the camels falling down at intervals. When we were S. of the Roman camp our rafiq joined us, Hamad al Lafi of the Ghiyath. The latter seem to be gom with everyone except the Sayyad and the Jumlan who are fellah tribes of Damascus. But, being with us he does not fear to meet the B. Hassan with whom he is gom. We want one of them as a rafiq. He goes with us for a mej. a day. The big chiefs of the Hasenneh are Sa’ad and Muhammad ibn Milhem who receive ma’ash from the Govt. The B. Hassan are a new group; they were once part of the Ghiyath. We got into the volcanic country at 11.30 and marched over broken ground straight onto a tell called el ‘Abd which we reached at 2.30 and found a muddy rain pool where we filled our girbehs. Grass growing between the stones and on the patches of low ground which are free of stones. A man of the Jumlan Sayyad rode out to see who we were; they are camped to the S. of us under the hog’s back which was my first bearing, 102° from ‘Adra. Got into camp at 4 in a low patch with the Saigal tells immediately in front of us. Beautiful sunset glow. We saw one of the Dumairis at his husbandry. He sowed first and ploughed afterwards. The Jumlani Sayyadi was much surprised to see me, but I offered no explanations. Excellent mushrooms-fitr. We saw a good deal of naitu today but there are no shajar tonight.’

9 January 1914
‘The temp fell to 22° in the night and our unwelcome guard had a bad time. Spent the day waiting for the Qaimmaqam of Salt. F. and Abdallah came back (the chowwish had offered to bring them back in the middle of the night) and we all spent the morning making a new tent pole for me, the soldiers aiding. Heaps of gazelle in the hills. Sat in F.’s tent and drew out a section of Kharaneh in afternoon. Cold and horribly windy. Jusef Ch. who has been away all day, came back in a good and obliging temper. It is all rather fancy I must say.’

10 January 1914
Disgusting day, cold, wind and sleet. We got out of camp and rode to the station where I waited for the baggage. Jusef Chowwish and 4 soldiers with us. A little way from the station we saw soldiers - it was the Q. who turned back to Zuwaideh [el-Juweiyida] by another road. When we reached Zuwaideh he had gone on to ‘Amman with the Yuzbashi. Hurried on and got to the hill down to ‘Amman, with little rain. I walked down, got onto Jusef’s horse and cantered up to the Serai, where I found the Q, Halim Beg Abu Sha’r, the Yuzbashi, Ishaq Effendi, and the Mudir, Muhammad Beg. All very friendly. I explained my doings, laid my complaint before them about the Yuzbashi and convinced Halim Beg that I was harmless. He telegraphed the same to Damascus. Two young men, Hanna Bsharra, and Ferid, son of Habib Effendi with whom I lodged at Salt. Hanna presently explained to me that Halim, a Xian, did not want to take any responsibility and I had better telegraph to Devey, which I did. My men pitched tents in pouring rain, below the theatre and before the Odeon.’

17 April 1914
‘It was quite cool today - comparatively; 85 was the highest temperature I registered and we profited by the weather and made a 10 hours march, without fatigue. A dull part of the desert, this is; long shallow steps leading us up into the high Hamad. I think we have left Mesopotamian heat behind and it looks as if it might rain, in which case we shall be flooded out, being in low ground for the sake of our evening lights, and under such insufficient canvas too. Khair inshallah! Today we saw fresh prints of horsemen. ‘Adwan (who is a charming man by the way) opined that they were Shammar of the Jezireh [al-Jazirah], Mesopotamia, looking for ‘Anazeh. with whom they are at feud. I feel no kind of anxiety as to ghazzus while I have ‘Adwan with me. A man from the house of the great shaikh of the Dulaim, a relative of his, and employed by the Government in collecting the cattle tax - it would be impossible to find a surer rafiq. When I part from him the fun may begin, but perhaps not - the Shamiyyeh [Shamiyah] is tolerably safe. Anyways I don’t bother at all; we have been through places so much worse and come out whole and sound. The Government has raised the sheep tax by more than a piastre - I suppose that’s the wax[?l. How much of it do they receive, I wonder? ‘Adwan says truly that the shaikhs eat more than the Government. The long fatigue of travel is upon me and I talk little while we ride. Whenever I talk ‘Adwan greets me with smiles and fair answers. I love these desert people and the sudden heart-whole part they play in your fortunes. And then you leave them and what do they think afterwards? I believe they have a pleasant memory of service rendered and of the quick intimacy of the few days’ journey. One of my rafiqs, far away on the other side of the Nefud, said once over the camp fire “In all the years when we come to this place we shall say: ‘Here we came with her, here she camped.’ It will be a thing to talk of, your ghazzu. We shall be asked for news of it and we shall speak of it and tell how you came.” I expect they will, and it makes me dreadfully anxious that they should tell nothing but good, since they will judge my whole race by me. That recollection very often checks the hasty word when I am tired, and feeling cross, or bored - heavens! how bored, cross and tired some times! Then I try to remember that they will tell how I came.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 12 July 2016.

A librarian’s business

Humfrey Wanley, an English librarian, palaeographer and scholar of Old English, died 300 years ago today. He was employed by manuscript collectors and was the first keeper of the Harleian Library. He left behind a rather unusual diary: although little more than a banal record of a librarian’s day-by-day business in the early 18th century, it is considered an important record for the history of book collecting.

Wanley was born in Coventry in 1672, the youngest son of the clergyman and author Nathaniel Wanley. Apprenticed to a Coventry draper while still in his teens, he developed an extraordinary fascination with medieval manuscripts, teaching himself to read and copy ancient hands in every spare moment. His talent attracted the attention of William Lloyd, whose patronage enabled him to enter Oxford in 1695. Although he never took a degree, his remarkable expertise in palaeography quickly earned him a place as an assistant in the Bodleian Library; there he began work that established him as the foremost Anglo-Saxon manuscript scholar of his generation.

During the following decade Wanley became indispensable to the study and cataloguing of England’s medieval manuscripts. He travelled widely in search of Anglo-Saxon books, compiled the pioneering catalogue of Old English manuscripts published in 1705, and gained the confidence of the great manuscript collector Robert Harley. From 1708 he served as keeper of the Harleian Library, helping to build one of Britain’s greatest manuscript collections, now preserved in the British Library. His meticulous cataloguing and formidable knowledge of early English texts made him one of the founders of modern manuscript scholarship.

Wanley married Anna Bourchier, the widowed Bernard Martin Berenclow, at St Swithin, London Stone, in 1705. Their three children all died in infancy, and Anna herself died in 1722. He later married Ann Lloyd. Frequently troubled by poor health, Wanley nevertheless continued working almost until the end of his life. He died of dropsy in London on 6 July 1726 and was buried in St Marylebone Parish Church. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Kemble College, The British Academy or an article in The Scribe Unbound.

Wanley’s diary covers the final eleven years of his life, from March 1715 until June 1726. Kept primarily as a working journal, it records his daily dealings with booksellers, collectors, scholars and aristocratic patrons, especially the Harleys, alongside visits to auctions, coffee houses and libraries. Rather than offering introspective reflections, it provides an unusually detailed picture of the London book trade, the formation of great manuscript collections and the practical business of scholarship in the early eighteenth century. It has become an indispensable source for historians of books, libraries and antiquarian learning.

Although long known to scholars in manuscript, the diary was not published until 1966, when the Bibliographical Society issued The Diary of Humfrey Wanley, 1715-1726 in two volumes, edited by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright. The full text can be read online at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts - including a part of the introduction - that give a flavour of the full published work.

Introduction: ‘Humfrey Wanley’s Diary or Journal, here printed for the first time in its entirety, was kept by him while Library-Keeper in the service of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, and Edward, his son, the 2nd Earl, and runs from 2 March 1714/15 to 23 June 1726, with, however, a considerable gap (except for one entry under 18 July 1716) between 22 August 1715 and 11 January 1719/20, when the Diary was resumed by my Lord Harley’s Order. It records the visits of, or to, booksellers and dealers, and negotiations with them; lists of manuscripts and printed books offered for sale, purchased, or received by gift; conversations with various people about library business; the visits of scholars and others to the Library, either as students there or as sightseers, and so on. It is in fact a record of the day-by-day business of a working librarian and is in no sense, therefore, a diary such as Pepys’s or Evelyn’s: apart from occasional references to his health, Wanley’s allusions to personal affairs are few, for instance, a reference to the sudden death of his wife (on 3 January 1721/22) - ‘my late grievous Calamity’ under the entry 15 January 1721/22 - and to the death of his landlady (under 10 November 1724), but a simple direct style, happy choice of descriptive word and phrase, skill in recounting an incident (such as the oft-quoted Warburton-Genoa Arms ‘frolick’ under 13 July 1720), a sarcastic, caustic tongue and occasional use of ‘asides’ (as when he says that Mr. Hugh Thomas ‘came to Study, as he think’s’ combined with the interest of the subject matter (at any rate to all those whose ways lie in the paths of librarianship) make it absorbing reading. The entry under 11 January 1719/20 suggests that when the Diary was begun in 1715 it was done so by Edward Harley’s instructions and that it was, in a certain sense, intended to be an official record of his work as custodian of the Library. It is preserved in two quarto-size volumes in the Lansdowne Collection.’

10 June 1715

‘My noble Lord Oxford was pleased to bring in an Original Letter of the Elector Palatin to Qu. Anne: and an Extract from a letter of the late Emperor of Morocco to her Majestie, in Arabic; with an English Version.’

14 June 1715

‘My Noble Lord Oxford was pleased to send in an Original Letter of Louise Princess of Holstein to Queen Anne.’

15 June 1715

‘My Noble Lord Oxford was pleased to send in an Original [letter] of Victor Amedeo the present King of Sicily, to himself.’

4 May 1720.

‘I went to Stafford-house, upon information that there are two very fine MSS which will be sold at the Sale of the late Earl of Stafford’s things, which Commence’s to morrow. I found the one to be a sort of Breviary, the other to be a kind of Diurnal, both very finely Illuminated.

A Letter was Sent to Mr Tanner, desiring him to attend my Lord this day by two of the clock. (in Order to receive my Lord’s Commissions for Buying at the Sale abovementioned).

Mr Sanderson sent me a Letter, with the Price he putt’s upon his Things; which price I think too dear, because very many of them His Lordship doth not want, or intend’s to buy: many other’s he hath already; and the remainder not considerable enough to induce him to part with so much as Mr Sanderson ask’s.

I went to Mr Warner the Goldsmith, desiring him to execute my Lords Commission for buying the MSS. abovementioned, and some other things at Stafford-house, which he readily undertook. I also bought of him the old Gyllyngham-Silver-Spoon for my Lord.’

28 June 1721

A Letter sent to Mr Noel, about a time when he is to wait upon my Lord.

Mr Charles Davis brought a MS. mostly Hebrew, written by a Christian, and partly Latin; being upon the Subject of Conjuration. I rejected it now; as I remember I did before about 7 or 8 years ago.

Mr Bogdani came, & took away the old Leaves he left with me.

Mr Cart came, enquiring about Mr Morley & A Bp. Sancrofts Papers.

Mr Bacon came, & told me that he had lately seen in a Booksellers Hands, one part of a Septi-partite Indenture between King Henry VII, and others, dated 16 July, anno regni 19, which is to be sold. But that the Seal & Bosses are taken off. I desired him to buy it for my Lord as cheap as he can; & he promised to do so.’

Trapped in a comical maze

‘Ten minutes after seeing the neurologist, I can’t get out of the car park. At Glasgow Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, I drive round and around a little multi-storey block for half an hour, unable to discern an exit. [. . .] So, I begin the year of dread and hope, trapped in a comical maze, in a comical car with a quizzical look on my face.’ This is from the diary - recently published in paperback - kept by Justin Currie, a Scottish singer and songwriter best known as a founding member of the rock band Del Amitri.

Currie was born in Glasgow in 1964. His father, John Currie, was an acclaimed choral conductor who served as chorusmaster of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus before later becoming music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Music formed part of Currie’s upbringing, although he was drawn more towards songwriting. He formed his first band while at school in Glasgow. 

In the early 1980s, he famously placed a handwritten notice in a Glasgow music shop seeking musicians, an advertisement that led to the formation of Del Amitri, with Currie the band’s bassist, lead singer and principal songwriter. Success came gradually, but albums including Waking Hours, Change Everything and Twisted produced a string of hit singles, among them Nothing Ever Happens, Always the Last to Know and Roll to Me, while Del Amitri ultimately sold more than six million records worldwide.

Alongside his work with Del Amitri, Currie developed a successful solo career, releasing four studio albums between 2007 and 2017. His succes is said to be based on the exceptional quality of his songwriting, admired for its emotional honesty, dry humour and literary sophistication. His lyrics often examine ageing, relationships, disappointment and resilience - all with a rare combination of self-deprecation and poetic precision. 

Following a lengthy hiatus, Del Amitri returned with Fatal Mistakes in 2021, the groups highest-charting record for three decades, before resuming extensive touring in Britain, Europe and North America. In 2022, Currie was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease - after noticing an increasingly obvious tremor in his right hand. Rather than retreating from public life, he continued to perform while adapting to the challenges of the condition. 

However, he also started to keep a diary. The resulting text was first published in hardback by New Modern in August 2025 as The Tremolo Diaries: Life on the Road and Other Diseases.The book, the publisher says, ‘is a beautiful and unique meditation on illness and aging. It is a twilight years reflection on band life in the 21st Century. It’s a travelogue around the world’s art galleries, parks, bars and sites of natural beauty. And most importantly, it is about love and friendship, adversity and courage, life and loss.’

The work has since been released as a paperback which can be previewed at Googlebooks; reviews can be read here and here. The diary itself falls into two sections structured around an arduous American support tour in 2023 and a more rewarding European tour in 2024. The entries are mostly dated ‘Day 1’, ‘Day 2’, ‘Day 3’ and so on although the underlying chronology can usually be reconstructed from the tour itinerary. 

18 January 2022

‘Ten minutes after seeing the neurologist, I can’t get out of the car park. At Glasgow Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, I drive round and around a little multi-storey block for half an hour, unable to discern an exit.

The neurologist, a frank young man whose kind manner was compromised by his surgical mask, had just asked me an odd question. ‘Why are you here?’

It had occurred to me then that he was terrified of dropping the P-bomb.

‘Well, my GP and I strongly suspect Parkinson’s,’ I reply. I can see the mans face, or the sliver of his face that remains uncovered, visibly relax.

‘I can do a brain scan today,’ he says, ‘but we won’t find anything. However, in that event, I will not tell you that you don’t have Parkinson’s. Or I can see you in a year.’

I opt for the year of half-knowing, half-hoping.

As I leave his tidy little room, I say, ‘So, you’re saying I have Parkinson’s, but you can’t confirm the diagnosis for a year. How do you know?’

‘Relax your arms by your side,’ he says, and my right hand gently trembles at my hip, as if it’s remembering something tricky.

‘Now lift your hands to shoulder height.’

The tremor stops.

‘That’s how?’

So, I begin the year of dread and hope, trapped in a comical maze, in a comical car with a quizzical look on my face. And twelve months later, I sail out of the same place secure in the knowledge I’m ill, and emboldened by the pleasant surprise that they have pills for this sort of thing.

I decide I’m going to keep working, keep touring, keep playing, despite the uneasy feeling that another man is growing inside me, slowly seizing the means of control. It’s as if your own shadow has leapt from the ground and buried itself within you. And this shadow has malevolent intent. He may share my shape, but now we’re combined, it’s a fight to find out who has the most valid claim.’

2 June 2023

‘Day 1. It’s 10 a.m. and we’re back in Cincinnati, parked inside the venue compound. I load my backpack and go backstage for a shower, drying myself with paper towels from a dispenser by the sink. I stroll out offsite and pay ten bucks to access an arts and crafts fair set up on the venue’s periphery. It’s a sea of dreadful tat: leather goods, tie-dyed rags and truly repugnant artwork. It’s heaving with bovine white flesh, ambling about in a retail daze. I sit under an oak and gaze at the river, half-boiled in my denim. One good thing: tonight’s shed is covered. But the heat is still fierce, its prison walls all around you, inches from your skin.

A harmony group start up from an open-sided enclosure, warbling a countrified Have You Ever Seen the Rain? Not today, chaps, no. Over my shoulder, I spot a lurid portrait of Elton John rendered in violent puce and electric blue. Jimi Hendrix and Willie Nelson hang beside him, equally disfigured. The band treble and birds sing. The man sharing my picnic bench is speaking in the broad twang of the South and I recall someone telling me that Cincinnati - situated in Ohio but on the Kentucky border - has a dual personality: half Yankee, half Confederate. There are ants and red spider mites crawling through my leg hair and I go down to the riverbank where two large geese guard three fluffy yellow chicks. A red speedboat bumps past and the sun drills down as the boat’s wake laps at the rocks with surprising violence. Seven waves, then silence. The geese take to the water honking a message I cannot fathom. Black spiders judder about at my feet as cotton-tufted seeds stream by on the breeze looking for somewhere to take root. I check out the band - mandolin, guitar and bass fiddle with a distinctly White Christian vibe - but shade is in short supply, so I go looking for the first food of the day. My morning pill has taken hold, so I’m alive for a few hours, the lowering proximity of the Ghastly Affliction held temporarily at bay. Make hay, make hay.

As I wend my way back to Bus World, I search for a hat. I need something straw with a wide brim. All I see are trinkets and future landfill disguised as objets d’art. I weave through baseball-hatted men slurping beer from plastic beakers, their wives in dime-store shorts and T’s, ponytails threaded through white sun visors. It's an army of consumption. Bored and dazed, killing time.’

Sir Haggard’s diaries

Sir Henry Rider Haggard, the British author of many an adventure story set in colonial Africa, often in sympathy with the native populations, was born 170 years ago today. He may have kept a private diary when younger, but the only diary extracts to have been published - Private Diaries and Diary of an African Journey - date from the last decade of his life. In the latter book, Haggard records an interesting conversation with the wife of South Africa’s first Prime Minister about the country’s future.

Haggard was born into a large family, in Norfolk, England, on 22 June 1856. His father was a barrister and his mother a writer. He was schooled at Ipswich Grammar, and then in London to enter the Foreign Office, but he never sat the necessary exams. Instead, in 1875, his father sent him to South Africa to work for his friend, Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal. By 1878, he had secured himself a job as registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal. In 1880, he returned to England briefly, and there married Marianna Louisa Margitson with whom he had one son (who died young), and three daughters.

The family left South Africa in 1882, and settled in Ditchingham, Norfolk. Haggard turned to the law and was called to the bar in 1884, but, by then, he was more interested in writing novels. His most famous work, King Solomon’s Mines, was published in 1885, and other stories based in Africa followed, most notably She, which has become, according to Wikipedia, one of the best-selling single-volume books of all time. Also according to Wikipedia, his novels portray many of the stereotypes associated with colonialism, ‘yet they are unusual for the degree of sympathy with which the native populations are portrayed.’

Although Haggard failed to get elected to Parliament in 1895, he became involved with reform in the agricultural sector, sitting on land use commissions, and occasionally travelling to the colonies. Apart from his many fiction works, he wrote several non-fiction books, including Rural England (1902) and an autobiography (The Days of My Life, 1926). He was knighted in 1912 and made a KBE in 1919. He died in 1925. Further biographical information about Haggard can be found at Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Days of My Life is available at Internet Archive or at Project Gutenberg Australia.

From the start of the First World War (until his death), Haggard kept a detailed diary. This was edited by D. S. Higgins and published by Cassel in 1980 as The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925. According to Kirkus Reviews, the published extracts (only some two per cent of the total diaries) make for ‘a live and affecting document’; however the impression the journal leaves is of ‘a fragile, worn-out relic from a bygone era’. Morton N. Cohen, author of Haggard’s biography for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) is less generous: ‘[The diary] is, sadly, the account of a sour old man who sees himself betrayed by fate, a disillusioned imperialist with authoritarian, racist leanings, who ranted against the Jews, communists, Bolsheviks, trade unionists, the Irish, and Indian nationalists (the editor of his diaries omits from the published text most of Haggard’s harangues).’

The full work can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive. Here are two extracts.

22 June 1921

‘By the lake side, Blagdon. Again my birthday. I am now 65! Alas how swiftly the years go by and I sink into old age. Disguise the truth as one will, it remains a melancholy truth that for me middle age has followed youth into the limbo of the past leaving at best but a few short years of life to be travelled before the last eclipse. Every year my friends grow fewer. Of the small number who still write to me upon my birthday my sister Ella was always one. And Ella has gone whither soon all of my generation must follow her.’

30 March 1917

‘I said to Kipling at the Athenaeum today that I trusted that we should not be expected to inhabit that region in the next world which was occupied by Germans. He replied that he was quite convinced that we should find none in any hell that he and I might land in. I think so too; whatever our sins we have not deserved that!

Rudyard Kipling and Martin Conway¹ were lunching together. Afterwards Conway came into the billiard room downstairs and informed me that Rudyard Kipling had been talking with admiration and amazement of the MS. of the story Yva, which I had given to him to read, saying that it was as full of go and imagination as though I had been sixteen instead of sixty.

Later Rudyard turned up and repeated this and more. He said to me that he had read the whole thing at a sitting ‘interlineations and all’, really read it, and that its grip and ‘freshness’ astonished him. He lay upon a sofa with those slippery sheets before him, unable to leave it, and thought it a remarkable work of imagination - really a new thing. I asked him if he had any criticisms to make. He said that he would not venture to offer any - there was the work - in a way outside of criticism - as good as anything I had ever done - or words to that effect. Evidently too, he meant all he said. This from such a man is complimentary, especially as he is not prodigal of compliments, but I am sure that when it appears the public - or rather the critics - will not discover these virtues in the book. It is not their fashion to praise my work. However, I am glad that the tale pleases its first reader so completely. The truth is that he (Kipling) has imagination, vision and can understand, amongst other things that Romance may be the vehicle of much that does not appear to the casual reader.’

Haggard also kept a diary earlier in his life, although how often is not clear. In 1899, Longmans, Green & Co published a farming diary for the year 1898, A Farmer’s Year (freely available at Internet Archive), and, in 1905, it published A Gardener’s Year (Internet Archive). Both books have diary-like entries, though they were written by Haggard as information books with publication in mind. In 2001, C. Hurst, by arrangement with the University of Natal Press, South Africa, published Diary of an African Journey (1914), as edited by Stephen Coan. Some pages of this can be viewed at Googlebooks (the source of the following extracts). Also, it’s worth noting that Haggard mentions - albeit only a couple of times - a diary in his autobiography.

7 March 1914
‘On this day, together with a number of other people, we were invited by the government to what might be termed a ‘joyride’ round Table Mountain. For one of our party, Mrs. Tatlow, it proved nothing of the sort. The motor she was in collided with another. She was thrown or fell out and has been left behind in bed at the Queen’s Hotel (I write this at Oudtshoorn) suffering from something like slight concussion. We lunched in a tent at the famous house of Groot Constantia. This place was granted in 1684 to Van der Stel, who was the next governor to Van Riebeeck. He built the house and began to cultivate the vines from which the well-known wine Constantia was made. Its last owners were the Cloetes who sold it in 1885 with 280 acres of land to the government for the small sum of £5 500. Since that time the state could have done well on their bargain if, as I was informed by the manager, they refused an offer for it of £28 000. Here there are 103 acres under vines and 56 under fruit trees. The house with its large cool rooms all adorned with ancient and appropriate furniture is really beautiful.

At luncheon which was given in a tent I sat next to, and had an interesting conversation with, Mrs. Botha, who expressed herself as very pleased that I agreed with her husband, the Prime Minister [Louis Botha], as to the uselessness of attempting to emigrate poor white folk to South Africa when already there were enough of them. Such people, unskilled and resourceless, she said, would come right up against the competition of the native, and their exclusion, which in some quarters was set down to race feeling, was really in their own interests. The only openings were for farmers with some capital, a scarce class. We discussed the outlook of the white inhabitants of South Africa in the future and both agreed that it seemed very doubtful - chiefly because of this native question. The native could no longer be suppressed, or even oppressed: he must follow his destiny and often he was an able and a competent person. In practice South Africa must face the fact that all it has to rely on, so far as the whites are concerned, is its present population and their progeny. But here came the trouble - the restriction of population (i.e. race suicide) is creeping in, even among the Boers, except quite in the backveld districts where it would reach ere long. One no longer saw the large families of 30 years ago: they grew smaller and smaller. Moreover those who were growing up, for some subtle reason, in enterprise, in virility and femininity in their widest sense, were not the men and women of the stamp of our generation. She had often said as much to her own children. What was to be the end of it? She could not tell but the future was dark and dubious. Perhaps at last South Africa would be the heritage of the black races with an admixture of white blood. The danger of war between whites and Bantu had gone by, but there were other dangers. Thus what I saw on the previous day, white man and black, working side by side was one of them: it meant the approach of equality. Once that was established how could the dwindling white people hold their own against an increasing race, already four or five times as numerous?

She said it was hard work for a man like her husband to be Prime Minister of the Union in these days and hard for his wife also. It was both exhausting and difficult to deal with politics continually and keep his hands quite clean. We both agreed that time and experience were wonderful softeners of strong views. Thus today I should not write another Jess and she would not think about the English as she had thought even a dozen years ago. She told me that although it seemed a strange thing for her to say, the deportation of the captured Boers had been a very good thing for the people. The sight of other lands had opened their minds and made them more progressive; also they had learnt what the British Empire meant. Such is a summary of this enlightening talk made from notes taken that evening, and I think one that is accurate, although compressed. Mrs. Botha struck me as an able woman in a quiet way and I liked her very much.’

10 March 1914
‘Woke up lo find that we were running over bush-clad sourveld with a few ostriches wandering round lonely Boer steadings. While I was dressing the iron lid of the washbasin fell on and crushed the top plate of the false teeth which were recently fitted with so much discomfort. A most annoying incident. Luckily I have the old temporary set with me which the dentist wanted to destroy.

At lunch time we came to a range of mountains called Outniqiua, or some such name, that tower above a little township of about 2 000 inhabitants, called George, which is largely inhabited by retired persons in search of quiet. The situation is fine on a flat plain dominated by tall grassy peaks down which run waterfalls that look like lines of wandering silver. At the beginning of the pass we went through government plantations of gums [eucalypts] of about 10 years of age which are doing splendidly. There are several of these here. Next we passed through some native bush in the kloofs, then came broom, heather and bracken, clothing the broad hill shoulders. From the crest of the pass the view was grand. The flat plain below diversified with plantations surrounding the scattered town of George and in the distance the great sea. All this district might be afforested, the hills with pines and the plains with gums. As the land seems to be worth no more than 10s. an acre it would be an excellent purpose to which to put it. About 4 o’clock we entered the Oudtshoorn valley, a hot and fertile place surrounded by hills, and everywhere saw ostriches feeding on lucerne in their wired camps.

On arrival we were met by the mayor and notables and taken off to see the farm of Mr. John le Roux where, after 34 years or so. I renewed my acquaintance with that ungainly but profitable fowl, the ostrich. By the way, at the station a gentleman whose name I think was Rex came up and asked me if I remembered him - as I did not he produced from his pocket an official order of the Pretoria High Court, written and signed by myself in 1878, appointing him a sworn interpreter. I wonder if he always carries it about with him. I was glad to see that the order was properly drawn and written in a better hand than I can boast nowadays. The signature, however, is identical with that I use at present.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 22 June 2016.

Drawing on the flat system

Almost 50 years after the death of the Scottish artist Duncan Grant, a previously unknown diary was discovered among family papers and later sold at auction. The diary/notebook, covering the whole of 1911, fetched £13,750 - more than seventeen times its estimate - and provides a rare first-hand record of the young artist’s life before he became one of the defining painters of the Bloomsbury Group.

Grant was born near Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands in 1885. The son of a British Army officer, he spent parts of his childhood in India and Burma before returning to England. After studying at Westminster School of Art he travelled in Europe, where he encountered the work of Cézanne, Matisse and other modern French artists whose influence would shape his own developing style. Prior to the First World War, he had become closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group. 

Grant formed friendships with Virginia Woolf (see One wave after another, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey (Strachey’s new biography), John Maynard Keynes and many other leading literary and artistic figures of the period. As well as painting, he designed textiles, stage sets, murals and decorative schemes, becoming one of the most versatile artists of his generation. He spent much of his adult life at Charleston in Sussex with Vanessa Bell, creating one of the most celebrated artistic households in Britain. Although fashions in art changed dramatically during his long career, he remained active well into old age and continued painting almost until the end of his life. He died in 1978. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Tate and Charleston.

The newly discovered diary covers the year 1911, when Grant was twenty-six years old and beginning to establish himself professionally. It emerged from the papers of the family of art historian John Woodeson and appears to be the only diary of Grant’s currently known to survive. It was put up for auction by Gorringe’s (Lewes) in March 2025 with a high estimate of £800 - and sold for £11,000! According to newspaper reports at the time, it was bought by a private buyer - see Scottish Field.

Rather than a reflective journal, the diary is essentially a working notebook, recording appointments, journeys, paintings, meals, exhibitions and encounters with friends. The entries reveal a busy existence centred on art and friendship. Grant frequently notes meetings with Adrian Stephen, Henry Lamb and other members of his circle. He worked steadily throughout the year, recording progress on paintings and occasionally making brief observations about artistic technique. One entry describes work on a composition of dancers and notes that a ‘system of colour appears plain & simple’, adding the intriguing remark: ‘Drawing on the flat system.’ Elsewhere he records painting a child, sketching friends, travelling to Cambridge, dining at restaurants, attending exhibitions and taking Turkish baths.

The diary also captures Grant moving through the wider world beyond Bloomsbury. In June 1911 he recorded attending the Coronation procession of George V and Queen Mary, later remarking on the evening celebrations and noting that ‘the illuminations were fine’. Other entries describe continental travel, including visits to Segesta, Palermo and Monreale in Sicily. The notebook even contains a pencil sketch of a standing nude, reinforcing its character as a working artist’s personal record rather than a conventional diary.

The following extracts from the notebook have been (amateurishly) transcribed from the images made available by Gorringe’s at the time of the auction.  

21 January 1911

‘My 26th birthday. Mother gave me this book as a present, also a cushion & a sponge. Aunt [?] 10/-. Adrian 2 photos. At studio by 10. Visit from Adrian. Painted dancing women. Lunch at 29. Again painted dancing women. Tea at ABC. Adrian. (Peacock. Melincourt). Home to dinner. Aunt returned from Switzerland. Daddy to dinner.’

23 January 1911

‘Dark day. Up late. 11. Painted dancers after lunch the red figure. System of colour appears plain & simple. Drawing on the flat system.’

24 January 1911

‘Bright day. Adrian to breakfast. He afterwards to Cambridge. Painted child. Lunch ABC with Henry Lamb all afternoon. Tea ABC. A back [too]. Drew him. Dinner at 29.’

22 June 1911

‘Full breakfast at 6. I visited the Coronation Procession. Took a position in Trafalgar Sq. I then walked up [the Haymarket?] & from Jermyn Street to St James’s Sq. Had a T. Bath at 8 [?] at about 12:30 & saw the procession from Pall Mall [. . .] Fitzroy Sq.’

Pioneer of amateur radio

Born 140 years ago today, Eugen Gerald Marcuse was one of the early experimenters with amateur radio. Long before the BBC launched its Empire Service, Marcuse was experimenting with short-wave broadcasts, transmitting speech and music to listeners across the British Empire and beyond. Although Marcuse is remembered today as a radio pioneer rather than a diarist, a single youthful journal of his from 1903 has survived and is catalogued at the British Library.

Marcuse was born in Sutton, Surrey, on 4 June 1886, one of three children. After attending local schools he entered the Crystal Palace School of Engineering in 1903 before serving an apprenticeship with Ruston and Proctor of Lincoln, manufacturers of steam engines, road rollers and tractors. His work took him abroad and, while still a young man, he developed an interest in the emerging technology of wireless communication. By 1913 he had obtained an experimental wireless licence and was conducting his own transmissions using equipment assembled from commercially available parts.

Following the First World War, Marcuse resumed his radio activities and soon became a leading figure in British amateur radio. Operating under the call sign 2NM and later G2NM, he participated in the pioneering transatlantic tests of the early 1920s and became one of the first British amateurs to establish two-way communication across the Atlantic. In 1925 he played a role in the formation of the International Amateur Radio Union and was elected one of its vice-presidents. He also relayed messages from the Hamilton Rice expedition in the Brazilian interior, earning recognition from the Royal Geographical Society.

The achievement for which he is best remembered came in 1927 when he began transmitting programmes of speech and music across the Empire using short-wave radio. These experimental broadcasts reached listeners throughout the world and anticipated by several years the BBC’s own Empire Service. Marcuse continued his radio work from Sonning-on-Thames and later Bosham, Sussex. During the Second World War he assisted the Radio Security Service, helping organise amateur volunteers who monitored radio transmissions on behalf of the authorities. He remained active in amateur radio throughout his life and died on 6 October 1961. Further information is most readily available from a pdf document available at the RADARC website.

Although Marcuse could not have claimed to be a diarist, there is a single surviving youthful journal from 1903 written during his studies at the Mechanical Engineering School, Einbeck, Germany. The 56-page volume - The Diary of Gerald Marcuse - was translated and edited by David Fry (a radio operator) according to the British Library, and published in the UK in 2022. However, there appears to be no trace online of its contents. Similarly, there’s an absence of information about a second David Fry book on Marcuse: in 2023, he seems to have published a fuller biography: Gerald Eugen Marcuse, G2NM: Pioneer of Radio.

The absence of accessible diary entries means that Marcuse’s own voice survives more readily through a taped interview recorded in the RADARC document, a year before his death. Looking back on his pioneering broadcasts, he recalled: ‘Everybody clamoured for Big Ben and nobody would give me a recording. I had to wait until 12.00 - it was the only time in those days they did it.’ Elsewhere he cheerfully admitted to ignoring official restrictions: ‘Your licence permitted you to rebroadcast? It didn’t, but I did not care in those days.’ 

Perhaps the most charming anecdote concerned the origins of his Empire broadcasts. Marcuse remembered receiving a letter from a listener in Bermuda who wrote: ‘I am enchanted with your voice which I hear every Sunday morning and I have three lovely daughters and a flourishing business. If you would like to come over you can have the pick of the daughters and the business.’

Inside Stalin’s Russia

Sir Reader Bullard, a British career diplomat whose final posting was as Ambassador in Tehran, died 40 years ago today. He served as Consul-General in Moscow and Leningrad in the 1930s, quietly observing, and recording in his diary, Stalin’s regime become increasingly more repressive. He published an autobiography in his lifetime, but the diary of his Russia period remained unpublished until edited by his son, Julian, and brought out by Day Books in 2000.

Bullard was born in 1885 in London, the son of a tally clerk. After grammar school, a brief period as a pupil teacher and two years at Queen’s College, Cambridge, he joined the Levant consular service of the Foreign Office in 1906. He started his career in Constantinople, first in the consulate-general and then in the embassy as a student interpreter. Subsequently, he was stationed at Basra, Mesopotamia, and later accompanied Sir Percy Fox on two missions to Tehran. After time in Britain, he returned to Iraq in May 1920 as military governor of Baghdad, with the rank of major.

Bullard spent two years back in London with the new Middle East department of the Colonial Office, set up by the colonial secretary, Winston Churchill. He married Miriam Smith in 1921, with whom he had five children. He went on to serve as Consul in Jeddah (1923-25), Athens, (1925-28), and Addis Ababa (1928). He was then appointed Consul-General in Moscow (1930), and in Leningrad (1931-34). After the Soviet Union, Bullard also took postings in Rabat and, eventually, as Ambassador in Tehran from 1939 to 1946. He was knighted in 1936.

After retiring from the diplomatic service, Bullard became Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in Oxford, and a member of the governing body of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He wrote Britain and the Middle East (Hutchinson, 1951) and his autobiography The Camels Must Go (Faber, 1961). E. C. Hodgkin gives this assessment of the man: ‘But it was for his personality that Bullard was chiefly remembered. He was a humble man. Short and stocky, with a craggy face and deep set eyes, he gave an immediate impression of rock-like solidity. A tireless worker, deeply conscious of his country’s past and of the highest standards she had the right to demand from her servants, he was no less conscientious in his attention to detail.’ He died on 24 May 1976. A little further information is available from Wikipedia or St Anthony’s College website.

While in Russia, Bullard kept a fairly detailed diary of his day-to-day doings. These were edited by his son and daughter-in-law, Julian and Margaret Bullard, and published by Day Books in 2000: Inside Stalin’s Russia: The Diaries of Reader Bullard 1930-1934. The publisher says the diaries ‘paint an unforgettable picture of Russia, its politics and people, in the critical years when Stalin was tightening his grip on power.’ In a foreword, Douglas Hurd (Foreign Secretary 1989-1995) observes that Bullard’s ‘laid-back style is particularly suited to the business of exploring and experiencing the Soviet system. Bullard did not come to Moscow with any prejudice against that system, if anything the reverse; but his natural shrewdness prevented him from being deceived. There are no denunciations of the cruelty which he began to find around him, just the straightforward record of the facts.’ A review of the book can be found at The Guardian.

Here are several extracts.

21 December 1930
‘The bag brought a pair of new skates which I have had screwed on to a pair of old boots. I went on the ice for the first time since 1914 (at Erzerum). I only fell over twice, but I can’t recover the one simple trick I had learned - the outside edge on the right foot.

The Chef de Protocol of the Diplomatic Corps is one Florinsky. It is said that his father was shot by the Reds and he never raised a finger. Asked how he could work with Bolsheviks after this, Florinsky is said to have asked if one’s father was run over by a tram should one cease to ride on trams?

A few evenings ago I went up to talk to Pott, and thinking that I might overlap his dessert I put a slab of chocolate (with almonds and raisins) into my pocket. I found Walker there and two Russian ballet- dancers. Pott and Walker danced with them to the sound of a gramophone, but I’m not sure that I wasn’t the feature of the evening, for I produced my chocolate, and the girls fell on it like dogs on a bone.

Last night Walker gave a party and invited the two ballet girls. The two girls greeted me with cries of ‘the chocolate grandpa!’ so if I had had any illusions about my value to the party they would have been dispelled.’

13 September 1932
‘Our messenger brought me a handbill which had been distributed to all the flats in his building. It orders each resident to collect six bottles, half a kilo of rags, half a kilo of bones, half a kilo of paper, three-quarters of a kilo of rubber, six kilos of old iron and one kilo of non-ferrous metal (brass, copper, etc.) and to hand them in. Quite impossible. Any scraps of old iron have been given in long ago. Paper is so short that the co-operatives give theirs customers fresh fish without paper. As for rubber - for a long time it has been impossible to buy a pair of galoshes unless you hand in an old pair.’

27 October 1932
‘The three maids report that all their clothes are falling to pieces and have put in an enormous list of things they want - at least enormous for this place where material is so short. There is not a yard of any material to be had.

Soermus, the Soviet violinist who visits England and combines his concerts with propaganda, is in some difficulty with his passport. Under the latest regulations, when a Soviet citizen returns from abroad his passport is taken from him, and if he wants to go abroad again he must apply for a new passport, and before it is granted he has to pass first a chistka, or purge, to find out exactly where the applicant has been and what he has done, and then an examination by a trio of communists. Mrs Soermus says her husband lives with his head in a musical cloud and notices nothing.

Woodhead has returned from another visit to the paper-mill. Two OGPU men who travelled part of the way with him had chickens and all sorts of things in their luggage. ‘The new bourgeoisie!’ one of them said to Woodhead. The mill, which ought to have begun operating two years ago, began in September and is making five tons of paper a day instead of forty-five tons. Woodhead attended an eight-hour meeting of about thirty men, only two of whom were engineers, the others were ‘Red’ directors, workmen etc. Woodhead refused to take any part in the discussion, which he described as worthless. To engage in the discussion would have been to admit that all these untrained people had a right to give an opinion on highly technical questions.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 24 May 2016.