I have been reading the Diaries of James Lees-Milne on and off for decades. Every page contains something funny or surprising.
They are, I think, the best diaries since Samuel Pepys – and maybe even better. They run from the 1940’s till his death in 1987. The author thought of himself as pretty much a failure, so there is hope for me yet.
This diarist made huge difference to Britain, for he used to represent the National Trust, looking for houses to save. There must be many still here that would have been lost but for him.
He seems to have known everyone. Here is a story he tells about Churchill, talking to Lord Cecil at the start of the war. It was told by the diplomat Harold Nicholson, who was there.
“Lord Cecil said, ‘Well, Winston, things are desperate. I feel twenty years older. ’ Churchill replied equally seriously, ‘Yes, Bob. Things are desperate. I feel twenty years younger’ – and these words convinced Harold Churchill was great man. They convinced me that Churchill enjoys war.”
Here is something about his aged publisher, Harry Batsford.
“He adores cats and fills his pockets with the heads, tails and entrails of fish. As he stumbles down the pavements he distributes these remnants to the congregating cats. The scene is like The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the smell of his clothes is overpowering.”
Here he is describing Batsford’s partner, Charles Fry, whom he was meeting for lunch at the Park Lane Hotel: “He was late, having just got up after some terrible orgy a trois with whips, etc. He is terribly depraved, and related every detail, not questioning whether I wished to listen.”
Every page is full of stuff like that! And what do I do with my day? Today my partner went off to feed reviving drinks to a friend who’s running the London Marathon. I stayed behind, thought about some copy I must write for two clients and had some ideas. I was cheered up last week by being told a letter I wrote in a great hurry got a 70% response and sold tons of stuff. I had an idea about that, too, this morning and dashed something off.
Then I listened to Out of the Cool, a Gil Evans album of 1960. Gil Evans arranged some historic music for Miles Davis in the ‘50s and ‘60s – and I think his contribution was as great.
I saw him in a Greenwich Village pub 22 years ago shortly before he died. I was with a singer I had an affair with. He was very frail – being fed some sort of medicine by a lady to keep him going – but the music was anything but. Like Lees-Milne, what he has done will live, but you can be damn sure nobody will be reading my stuff!
Oh, great news: she (partner, I mean) just saw Gordon Ramsay running along and is in love. Jesus. Did anyone fall in love with cooks in James Lees-Milne’s day? But then again, who even knew what copywriters were?
A Day in the Life
About the Author
In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.
He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.
Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.
He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.