In May 1931, as Alan Don travelled from Dundee to Lambeth Palace to become Archbishop Lang’s chaplain, he began a diary which he kept for the next fifteen years. He also became chaplain to the King and to the Speaker. Because Don straddled so many worlds – ecclesiastical, royal, political, and social – his diaries are not narrowly churchy, but provide a fascinating picture of Britain and her élite in the 1930s and ‘40s.
An array of personalities pass through the pages: clergy, the Royal Family, prime ministers, viceroys, politicians, soldiers, diplomats, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi ambassador to London, musicians, artists, and assorted rogues and reprobates such as Harold Davidson, the unfrocked vicar of Stiffkey.
Don had a ringside view of the 1935 Silver Jubilee of George V, the king’s death and burial in 1936, and the Abdication Crisis later that year. Some courtiers used him as a channel secretly to convey information about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson to Lang. Don provides a poignant description of the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937.
Don’s diaries chart the agonizing descent into the Second World War. He disliked Hitler but thought naively that if the Versailles treaty could only somehow be adjusted in Germany’s favour, things would somehow settle down. Don’s outlook gradually changed and he became a firm supporter of Winston Churchill. Don lived in London throughout the Second World War and chronicled the Blitz. He survived and was nominated by Attlee to be the Dean of Westminster.
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