A.L. Rowse's journals extend over the greater part of the 20th century. Born in 1903, the son of a poor, virtually illiterate Cornish china-clay worker, he became one of the most prolific authors of his time and one of the most read. For 50 years a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (its first working-class entrant) he seized the opportunities offered in scholarship, in literature, in politics and above all in public controversy.