The Fringes of Power

John “Jock” Colville, a 24-year-old Foreign Office staffer, was assigned to work at 10 Downing Street, Britain’s equivalent of the White House, at the outbreak of World War II. When Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, Colville, who kept a detailed secret diary, chronicled the new leader’s every move as he rallied his countrymen to keep fighting Hitler’s Germany. His entries for this critical period offer a vivid behind-the-scenes portrait of Churchill, his inner circle—and his strenuous efforts to forge a close partnership with President Roosevelt, who had vowed to keep his country out of the war.

The opposite of Macmillan in that Colville was very young (in his mid-twenties when he started this diary) and fairly junior. What makes this book extraordinary is partly that Colville’s is Churchill’s Boswell – he was the prime minister's private secretary and saw him almost every day. Partly too, this book captures an odd kind of upper-class life that survived even during the war. It is strange to read about riding in Richmond Park in the middle of the London blitz.