Macmillan was to find his diaries a valuable resource for the six volumes of memoirs he produced in retirement. It is unclear whether this helped to prompt him to start his own. Among his favourite reading matter were memoirs, diaries and letters. It is clear from Macmillan’s reading how highly he valued resilience of character. ![]() Macmillan may have been a consummate performer on television, but the only television he possessed was in the servants’ hall of his country house, Birch Grove. For instance, faced with criticism from his party and across the Commonwealth over his European policy he commented on 22 September 1962: ‘Severe crisis – personal or political, makes Scott a necessity’. Reading was Macmillan’s principal pastime, relaxation and means of coping with the pressures of office. As well as demonstrating his ability to condense complex documents, these entries also provided an opportunity for reflection on current policy problems. Macmillan would also usually add a pithy summary. Both men were voluminous readers, conscientiously recording every book they devoured. Macmillan’s publishing connection probably lies behind the other contrast with the Gladstone diaries. In total they run to just under a million words. The last three notebooks record Macmillan’s political and business activities following his return to run the family publishing firm, up to May 1966. A further 23 describe his premiership down to his resignation on 18 October 1963. There are 22 of these notebooks covering Macmillan’s ascent to the premiership on 10 January 1957. It was not until August 1950, that Macmillan began a much more self-conscious record of his activities, written up in black-bound notebooks in his somewhat unsteady scrawl (he was wounded in the right hand at the Battle of Loos in 1915). In 1945, however, this diary abruptly stopped. Macmillan’s War Diaries detailing his service as Minister Resident in Algiers, Greece and Italy in 1943-45 similarly began as letters to his wife Dorothy, before becoming a regular daily journal. During the Great War he effectively began keeping a diary in form of letters home from the front to his mother. ![]() Gladstone kept a diary throughout his life. ![]() There are, however, two significant differences between these prime ministerial diaries. The most detailed and literary diaries of all the occupants of 10 Downing Street were those kept by Harold Macmillan and William Gladstone.
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