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  • Published: 4 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446420270
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384

The Diaries Of Charles Greville




Covering the period from 1815 to 1860 this relatively little-known diary is every bit as colourful, vivid and revealing of its age as Pepys's diary is of the 17th century

Charles Greville (1794-1865) made his first occasional diary entries in 1814, but the diary only became a regular habit in the mid-1820s, continuing with occasional breaks, about which he is self-reproachful, through the reigns of George IV, William IV and Victoria. Finally, in 1860, after shaking his head over the worrying triumphs of Garibaldi, he closed it, once and for all. The grandson of a duke, Greville looked with a level and scornful eye upon royalty. George was 'the most worthless dog that ever lived'; William 'the silliest old gentleman in his own dominions, but what can be expected of a man with a head like a pineapple?' The diaries roused Queen Victoria - 'an odd woman' - from the lethargy of her widowhood.She spoke of Greville's 'indiscretion, indelicacy, ingratitude toward friends, betrayal of confidence and shameful disloyalty'.

Greville's circle included Talleyrand, Wellington, Macaulay, Sydney Smith, Princess Lieven, Lord Grey, Melbourne, Guizot and Disraeli, as well as 'jockeys, bookmakers and blackguards'.As Clerk of the Privy Council, Greville works for a compromise on the Reform Bill.He witnesses Covent Garden theatre burning down.His closest friend, Lord De Ros, is caught cardsharping. Visiting Balmoral, he finds Albert and Victoria living 'not merely like small gentlefolks, but like very small gentlefolks'. When cholera comes, he writes laconically of 'Mrs Smith, young and beautiful, taken ill while dressing for Church and dead by nightfall.' Not a chatterbox, Charles Greville brilliantly assembles everyone else's chatter. This is the intelligent voice of another age, an uneasy aristocrat catching history on the turn and looking dubiously at the future.

  • Published: 4 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446420270
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384

About the author

Edward Pearce

Edward Pearce is a political journalist and author. He has been a leader writer for the Daily Express, a Commons sketch writer and leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, a columnist for the Sunday Times and the Guardian, and sketch writer for the New Statesman. He also writes regularly for the Yorkshire Post, and was a panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze. He has written over 13 books, from The Senate of Lilliput (1983) to his most recent, The Great Man (2007), a life of Sir Robert Walpole.

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Praise for The Diaries Of Charles Greville

'A thoroughly good idea.'

Independent

'Edward Pearce has done a good job of reducing 40-odd years of diary entries to a manageable size.'

Guardian

'Edward Pearce has released Greville from the prison of dusty research libraries, giving new life to a literary treasure.'

Scotland on Sunday

'For insights into the comedy of politics I doubt The Diaries of Charles Greville can be matched. Half Samuel Pepys, half Alan Clark, this inventory of wasted time an assessment of colleagues can't be bettered...The magic ingredient in the Pearces' volume is the candour of the original author...rescued artfully from oblivion'.

Scotsman

'The arrival of this book is a good deed in a naughty world...Pearce is to be congratulated for bringing growly, sardonic Greville back into the hubbub he retired from.'

Daily Telegraph