A.L. Rowse was a prolific and opinionated diarist. He counted amongst his close friends and enemies some of the brightest and most influential of his contemporaries. We see here the transformation from shy Cornish prodigy to best-selling author and feted academic, as well as the lasting contradictions in his character - the tender-hearted and sensitive man given to towering rages and lasting vendettas; the painstaking historian; brilliant researcher; and advocate of modernism who became famous as a popular historian.