The Last Diaries : In and Out of the Wilderness

Alan Clark's acclaimed Diaries end a month before his death in 1999.

After the first volume (30 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list), The Times wrote: 'The best diarists, from Pepys and Boswell, to 'Chips' Channon and Harold Nicolson, have been the souls of indiscretion.

But none so indiscreet as Mr Clark. For its Pooterish self-assessment, for Mr Toad's enthusiasm for new things, for Byron's caddishness, for its deadly candour, it is one of the great works in the genre.' This third volume begins in 1991 with Alan Clark contemplating quitting as MP.

Life at Saltwood Castle, his home in Kent, hangs heavy; then comes the Scott inquiry and the Matrix Churchill affair, the publishing of the first volume of the Diaries, which leads 'the coven', a family of former girlfriends, to sell their story to the News of the World.

The diaries follow his ongoing efforts to return to Westminster.

As ever there is much, much more: his long-suffering wife Jane, his family, an affair, and, not least, the country life.

This volume closes with the tragedy of his final months when he is diagnosed with a brain tumour, but he keeps his diary until he can no longer read the keyboard. Jane Clark movingly reads her own diary of Alan's illness and death.