Hugh Casson: Diary

Hugh Casson describes his diary in characteristically modest terms: ' a brief illustrated record of a full and fascinating year in the service of a great institution, The Royal Academy of Arts'. His diary is, in fact, neither brief nor merely an illustrated record. It is a remarkable insight into the exacting public life led by Britain's foremost ambassador of the arts.

If it is incidentally a roll-call of the English establishment, it is also full of vignettes of his meetings with school children, students and chance acquaintances, and of his happy personal life as husband, father and grandfather. His text is witty and serious, philosophical and critical, perceptive and optimistic about human nature. His pen and ink cartoons are economical and sharply pointed, his watercolours gentle and fresh.