When the diaries of Harold Nicolson were first published in three volumes in 1966-68, they were widely acclaimed as an incomparable record of their period. Harold Wilson was an MP from 1935 to 1945, and a Junior Minister in Churchill's wartime government. He was the only person to be present at the Versailles Peace Conference, the Nuremberg Trials and the 1946 Paris Peace Conference. He was also a well-known journalist, broadcaster and writer, and knew many of the most eminent men and women of his day, from Virginia Woolf and W.H. Auden to Wallis Simpson and Lord Beaverbrook. His wife was the poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, and together they created the famous garden at Sissinghurst. Marked by the diverstiy of his interests and the irony of his style, Harold Nicolson's diary is a record of his life and times, as well as a historical document.