Who's In, Who's Out: The Journals of Kenneth Rose: Volume One 1944-1979

This book is such a well-kept secret. I just happened to run across a reference to it in a newspaper article. Absolutely fascinating. Could not put it down. Not an easy read...the print is small and you definitely need to know your British history, as well as a healthy knowledge of key figures in high society and politics.Volume II just arrived today. Can’t wait to get started...

Marvellous diaries, I have always loved the James Lees-Milne diaries, these are much more politically based but still very easy to read and a very high standard of writing.Really takes you behind the scenes of the governments of the day, plus public schools and several public figures. Not gossipy unlike Lees-Milne but still very readable.

Great insight on everything and everyone from 1945-1979. His entry’s early on are not consistent but I love how his entry’s latter on detail conversations that cover everything from lord Curzon, Abdication, Munich etc. You need to have some knowledge of the period and the people but the footnotes at the bottom of pages helped me a lot.

This first of two volumes of the diaries of the biographer and columnist Kenneth Rose is a very enjoyable read if you are interested in the social and political history of the governance of England between the end of WW2 and Mrs Thatcher's coming to powerRose mentions the diaries of both Chips Channon and James Lees-Milne, which are better known diaries from at least some of this period. However, Rose's diary is rather different from those – much less about himself (although his kindness and somewhat delicate character come out) and much more about the people he is talking about. His opinion of those other two diarists is not high – at one point he describes Channon as 'stupid' although he does allow that the diaries (then available only in the expurgated form - I wonder what he would have made of the more recent full version) give a good insight into society; as for Lees-Milne, he is beyond the pale.The best part of Rose's work is probably the many funny stories about famous people he retells. This is a very funny book. It also is a useful corrective for the reputation of some people now regarded in a somewhat negative light. Selwyn Lloyd is an example of this and rather differently, Jeremy Thorpe.Rose knew some of the royal family well, others less so. He is a sympathetic writer about them but not an uncritical one.This is also a very depressing book in a way, because it shows that there are so many people in positions of power through their education and social status rather than ability. This applies almost as much to the left wing as the right.Although in general well edited, the volume has curious footnotes. Sometimes basic information on the same person is repeated in another footnote further on; and some of the footnotes do not adequately explain context for readers with less knowledge of the times. It is also irritating that the footnotes have symbols rather than numbers, so that you have to look carefully to find the right one.

As other reviewers in the UK have said, this is a thoroughly readable book. Kenneth Rose's job as a columnist was to persuade people to read The Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph; in this respect he succeeded. So many of the anecdotes were in the laugh-out-loud category and IMHO the prize must go to the one of Churchill and Attlee and the drunken sailor in the train.But as a long-time expatriate (since 1967) I am deeply saddened by this book. It goes to show that the UK establishment and the chattering classes were unaware of what was happening to the country. The demise of manufacturing employment and the expansion of electronic media and computers made no impression on the politicians and artistic eccentrics and royal hangers-on who mainly populated Rose's pages. Perhaps the only exception was C.P.Snow. Rose liked him but had little to say about his ideas. He was not the stuff of which gossip columns are made.