The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, OM, 1938-1945

Sir Alexander Cadogan was one of the most outstanding civil servants Britain has ever known.He kept a diary from 1933 until the year of his death, 1968, at the age of eighty-three.This volume concentrates on the crucial years from 1938 to 1945.In 1938 Sir Alexander became the Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office.He was to hold that position for the next eight years.As chief adviser to three Foreign Secretaries, Eden (for two periods), Halifax and Bevin, working under three Prime Ministers in Chamberlain, Churchill and Attlee, Cadogan had longer consecutive service at the centre of British affairs than any of them.His tenure of office lasted from the first rumblings of the Czechoslovak and Munich crises through the entire war years to the establishment of the United Nations Organization (in the birth of which - and later as Britain's Permanent Representative - he had a profound and formative role admired on both sides of the Iron Curtain).As head of the Foreign Office, trusted