With James Callaghan in No. 10

Downing Street Diary Volume Two

The second volume of Bernard Donoughue's fascinating politcial diaries.

These diaries...convey a fresh and vivid sense of the tensions and strains of this period

Donoughue's diaries of his time as political advisor to Jim Callaghan are proving gripping reading

Superb book... historians will plunder the Donughue diaries to gain an understanding of one of the great turning points in modern British history. But this book also has a huge contemporary resonance. It is very accessible to the general reader an I cannot recommend it highly enough

An admirable and important contribution to British history ... A copy of Donoughue's fascinating book should be sent to every minister in office

As an inside account of the collective political nervous breakdown suffered by the Labour movement in the late Seventies, these diaries have no equal

Bernard Donoughue's superb Downing Street diaries

An absorbing political thriller written by someone on the inside track

Donoughue's diaries of the death rattles of Labour's last administration should be essential reading at No. 10. Books such as this rise far above mere political gossip: they are essential reading for any member of British government

Lord Donoughue of Ashton was born in 1934 and educated at Northampton Grammar School, Oxford and Harvard. He worked on the editorial staff of The Economist, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and The Times, and taught at the London School of Economics from 1963 to 1974, when he moved to 10 Downing Street as Senior Policy Adviser to Harold Wilson and then to James Callaghan. After working in the City, he served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food between 1997 and 1999. His previous books include British Politics and the American Revolution (1964), Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (1973, with George Jones), Prime Minister (1987) and The Heat of the Kitchen (2003). He lives in London and Berkshire.

The first volume of Bernard Donoughue's Downing Street Diary was described by Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph as 'the best account of Harold Wlson's last days'; 'the sheer scale and detail are fascinating' wrote Peter Riddell in the Times Literary Supplement. This second volume covers the three years, 1976-79, when Donoughue was Senior Policy Advisor to James Callaghan. 
 
At first Callaghan quickly established dominance over his cabinet and restored calm after the plots and scandals of the later Wilson years. His incomes policy reduced inflation and, in the teeth of opposition from the left wing, he negotiated the notorious IMF loan at the expense of eliminating some of Labour's most cherished dreams. By 1978, Callaghan, a politician of great patriotism and decency, seemed to have succeeded in steering Britain into calmer waters. But then the storm broke. Trade union militants brushed aside their mediocre leaders and launched a ferocious attack on Callaghan's pay policy, driving up inflation and demonstrating the government's impotence. In the diaries we see the prime minister and the government paralysed as the 'Winter of Discontent' began to bite and politics took to the streets. 
 
As Labour drifted to inevitable defeat in the 1979 election we see Callaghan fighting honourably. From the smoke of battle there emerges a striking new leader: Margaret Thatcher. The diaries describe vividly both the decline and final collapse of 'old' Labour and how Mrs Thatcher took the opportunity to launch her crusade to dismantle trade union power and much of the British public sector. 
 
Besides James Callaghan the chief figures in this volume of Lord Donoughue's diaries are Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey, Tony Crosland, Michael Foot, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Tony Benn.

Bernard Donoughue

Will Sulkin

With Harold Wilson in No. 10

Early in 1974, Bernard Donoughue, a young academic at the London School of Economics, was invited by Harold Wilson first to help fight the General Election and then to found and run the Policy Unit at Number Ten Downing Street, a body independent of the Civil Service machine working solely for the Prime Minister. He thus joined Wilson's notorious 'kitchen cabinet' with Joe Haines, Wilson's combative press secretary, and Marcia Williams, Wilson's personal and private secretary. 
 
Donoughue remained in Downing Street throughout Wilson's final premiership and was at the centre of events during this crucial period of history. His diary, kept every day, provides an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Harold Wilson, struggling to hold the Labour Party together, drinking heavily, increasingly paranoid about 'plots' and the press, and apparently in thrall to Marcia Williams. Williams had an extraordinary hold over the Prime Minister and violently resented 'intrusion' from any other advisors, Donoughue included. Though the story of Wilson's 'kitchen cabinet' has been told before, there has never been an account as intimate and explosive as this remarkable diary.

Bernard Donoughue

Books by Bernard Donoughue

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