Wider still and wider grows the span of authors' acknowledgements. My forbearing husband/wife, my secretary who corrected my spelling, my patient editor and Lord Weidenfeld Whose Idea it Was - these we have grown to expect and honour. Elizabeth Longford, now in her eighties, thanks two family doctors who 'made life so secure for us' (and who themselves survived to 90 and 86). She is grateful to one son-in-law for 'introducing me to the perfect diet during a critical time in the writing of this book' and to another for a stimulating holiday in the sun: 'It was an exhilarating experience to listen to the Pinters' and Billingtons' play-reading sessions, interlaced with passionate talk about Amnesty and Star Wars under the stars.' She is grateful, too, for the custom of 'manuscript bartering' prevalent in the family, on the basis of 'I'll read yours if you'll read and criticise mine.' All of which is a foretaste of the warm family feeling which pervades this chronicle of politics and parturition (babies are born to the author on pages 143, 149, 179, 204, 211, 217, 239 and 252).

LRB 9 October 1986 | PDF Download