Through Wood And Dale - Diaries 1975-1978

Ah, James Lees-Milne. Patron saint of architectural snobbery, discreet scandal, and the exquisitely judged raised eyebrow. In Through Wood and Dale – Diaries 1975–1978 (1998), published by John Murray (ISBN: 9780719555992), we are invited once more into the drawing rooms, gardens, luncheon tables and minor emotional tremors of a man who could describe a hedge with the same moral intensity others reserve for revolutions.

These are the later diaries—1975 to 1978—years when Britain was wobbling economically, culturally, and politically, but James was still attending lunch. While the nation wrestled with inflation, strikes, and existential dread, Lees-Milne wrestled with seating plans, fading aristocrats, and the correct temperature at which one ought to serve one’s disapproval. The contrast is delicious. The world burns; someone’s guest bedroom wallpaper is quite wrong.

What you get here is a man wandering “through wood and dale” (and often through Wiltshire) with pen in hand and standards intact. Country houses loom. Old friends decay charmingly. New acquaintances fail to meet the required intellectual humidity. There are visits, letters, church services, delicate complaints, faint flirtations, and the occasional existential sigh wrapped in silk. It is less a diary and more a continuous audit of civilisation.

And yet—behind the dry wit and polite hauteur—there is vulnerability. Lees-Milne observes ageing not as tragedy but as an architectural alteration: the façade remains; the foundations creak. The tone is reflective, sometimes melancholic, occasionally sharp enough to draw blood. He can be acerbic, yes—but rarely dull. Even his boredom is exquisitely curated.

For lovers of Englishness in its most distilled, faintly absurd form, this is nectar. If you enjoy the idea of eavesdropping on a conversation where everyone has a double-barrelled surname and a private despair, you will feel at home. If you prefer explosions and car chases, there are gardens here—sometimes with gravel.

This copy is in Good condition, which feels appropriate. A diary about the endurance of standards should itself show a little dignified wear. It has likely been read by someone who understood that gossip, when elevated by intelligence, becomes literature.

From Crappy Old Books: where revolutions may come and go, but someone is always quietly judging the curtains.

Dust jacket has fading, as per scan.

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