Volume 28, Number 12 · July 16, 1981
Picture of Dorian Gray
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman
edited by Janet Morgan
Holmes & Meier, 1,136 pp., $35.00
Richard Crossman's diaries, both in government and in opposition, will always stand high among the essential source materials for anyone who writes about British politics in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Crossman wrote with that object in mind. He intended to illuminate British politics from the inside, more than anyone had done before. And he succeeded in that. The illumination is sometimes a bit tricky, but after all it is the historian's business to allow for the trickiness of sources. And as sources go, this one is more reliable than most. That constitutes, as we shall see, something of a paradox.
Review, 3416 words
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