Downing Street Diary - 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.

Product details

• Authors: Bernard Donoughue
• Assisted by: Will Sulkin (Editor), Sulkin Will (Editor)
• Publisher: Pimlico
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.01.2016
• EAN: 9781845952334
• ISBN: 978-1-84595-233-4
• No. of pages: 800
• Dimensions: 153 mm x 234 mm x 34 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History > Biographies, autobiographies; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political administration; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Military, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / General, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century, Politics & government, Political leaders & leadership, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Politics and government, History and Archaeology, Political leaders and leadership