In the original dust jacket. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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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 TLS. 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 income 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 paralyzed 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 honorably. From the smoke of battle there emerges a striking new leader: Margaret Thatcher. The diaries vividly describe 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.

Reviews:

• • `His first volume was widely acclaimed; this volume, covering Callaghan’s 1976-79 premiership, is even more fascinating.’– FT

• ‘Provides a detailed insight’ — The News Line

• `these diaries…convey a fresh and vivid sense of the tensions and strains of this period’ — Literary Review

• `this superb book… a huge contemporary resonance… very accessible to the general reader and I cannot recommend it highly enough.’– Daily Mail

• `this superb book… a huge contemporary resonance… very accessible to the general reader and I cannot recommend it highly enough.’

• `His first volume was widely acclaimed; this volume, covering Callaghan’s 1976-79 premiership, is even more fascinating.’
• ‘Provides a detailed insight’

About the Author: Bernard Donoughue taught at the London School of Economics from 1963 to 1974, when he moved to 10 Downing Street as Senior Policy Advisor to Harold Wilson and then to James Callaghan. His books include Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician, Prime Minister, The Heat of the Kitchen and Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10.