Librería Samer Atenea
Librería Aciertas (Toledo)
Kálamo Books
Librería Perelló (Valencia)
Librería Elías (Asturias)
Donde los libros
Librería Kolima (Madrid)
Librería Proteo (Málaga)
Charles Greville (1794-1865) made his first occasional diary entries in 1814 but the diary only became a regular habit in the mid-1820s continuing with occasional breaks about which he is self-reproachful through the reigns of George IV William IV and Victoria. Finally in 1860 after shaking his head over the worrying triumphs of Garibaldi he closed it once and for all. The grandson of a duke Greville looked with a level and scornful eye upon royalty. George was ’the most worthless dog that ever lived’; William ’the silliest old gentleman in his own dominions but what can be expected of a man with a head like a pineapple?’ The diaries roused Queen Victoria - ’an odd woman’ - from the lethargy of her widowhood.She spoke of Greville’s ’indiscretion indelicacy ingratitude toward friends betrayal of confidence and shameful disloyalty’.Greville’s circle included Talleyrand Wellington Macaulay Sydney Smith Princess Lieven Lord Grey Melbourne Guizot and Disraeli as well as ’jockeys bookmakers and blackguards’.As Clerk of the Privy Council Greville works for a compromise on the Reform Bill.He witnesses Covent Garden theatre burning down.His closest friend Lord De Ros is caught cardsharping. Visiting Balmoral he finds Albert and Victoria living ’not merely like small gentlefolks but like very small gentlefolks’. When cholera comes he writes laconically of ’Mrs Smith young and beautiful taken ill while dressing for Church and dead by nightfall.’ Not a chatterbox Charles Greville brilliantly assembles everyone else’s chatter. This is the intelligent voice of another age an uneasy aristocrat catching history on the turn and looking dubiously at the future.
