Who's In, Who's Out: The Journals of Kenneth Rose

'The most detailed, amusing and accurate account ever of the post-war world of the English Establishment' William Shawcross, Daily Telegraph

'Extremely entertaining' Jane Ridley, Literary Review

Kenneth Rose was one of the most astute observers of the establishment for over seventy years. The wry and amusing journals of the royal biographer and historian made objective observation a sculpted craft.

His impeccable social placement located him within the beating heart of the national elite for decades. He was capable of writing substantial history, such as his priceless material on the abdication crisis from conversations with both the Duke of Windsor and the Queen Mother. Yet he maintained sufficient distance to achieve impartial documentation while working among political, clerical, military, literary and aristocratic circles. Relentless observation and a self-confessed difficulty 'to let a good story pass me by' made Rose a legendary social commentator, while his impressive breadth of interests was underpinned by tremendous respect for the subjects of his enquiry.

Brilliantly equipped as Rose was to witness, detail and report, the first volume of his journals vividly portrays some of the most important events and people of the last century, from the bombing of London during the Second World War to the election of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first woman Prime Minister, in 1979.

“What is so good - and is so well brought out in D.R.Thorpe's edition - is that [Kenneth Rose] was master of his material. This was the British establishment ... his diaries compose accurate, fair-minded history ... As Kenneth's editor in the later years of his Albany column, I was irritated by his fault (quite the opposite of most of us journalists) of putting into his articles less than he knew. This is corrected in his Journals. He knew a lot and he put it in; and now we can read it.-- Charles Moore , THE SPECTATOR”

The diaries, chronicling the events of previous generations, give a unique glimpse of the personalities and preoccupations of the statesmen of that time. Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler, amongst other figures, are shown in a different and more informal way than their biographers have done and the differences in their approach to politics and each other are amusingly revealed

Intimate with the highest levels of society, politics, the arts and the Royal Family, Kenneth Rose has left us one of the most vivid, full and revealing records of the postwar era

Kenneth Rose was born in 1924. He was educated at Repton and was a scholar at New College, Oxford. He served in the Welsh Guards during the Second World War and was subsequently a schoolmaster at Eton, before working for the British Council in Rome and Naples. He joined the Daily Telegraph in 1951 and worked on the Peterborough column before starting the long-running Albany at Large column in the Sunday Telegraph in 1961. He published prize-winning biographies of Lord Curzon, King George V and Victor Rothschild, as well as acclaimed studies of the Victorian Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and his family in The Later Cecils. He died in 2014, writing his journals to the end.

D. R. Thorpe was born in 1943 and educated at Fettes and Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a regular contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has published five acclaimed biographical works, the most recent of which, Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan won the Biennial Marsh Biography Award 2009-10.

'The most detailed, amusing and accurate account ever of the post-war world of the English Establishment' William Shawcross, Daily Telegraph 'Extremely entertaining' Jane Ridley, Literary Review Kenneth Rose was one of the most astute observers of the establishment for over seventy years. The wry and amusing journals of the royal biographer and historian made objective observation a sculpted craft. His impeccable social placement located him within the beating heart of the national elite for decades. He was capable of writing substantial history, such as his priceless material on the abdication crisis from conversations with both the Duke of Windsor and the Queen Mother. Yet he maintained sufficient distance to achieve impartial documentation while working among political, clerical, military, literary and aristocratic circles. Relentless observation and a self-confessed difficulty 'to let a good story pass me by' made Rose a legendary social commentator, while his impressive breadth of interests was underpinned by tremendous respect for the subjects of his enquiry. Brilliantly equipped as Rose was to witness, detail and report, the first volume of his journals vividly portrays some of the most important events and people of the last century, from the bombing of London during the Second World War to the election of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first woman Prime Minister, in 1979.

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