Publisher's Synopsis
These diaries are a unique record of the times Beatrice Webb and her husband Sidney Webb lived in. They were at the centre of British intellectual and political life for nearly seventy years and this diary glitters with the great names of Edwardian society: Rosebery and Asquith, Churchill and Lloyd George, Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Bernard Shaw. It is also a remarkable revelation of the private face of one of the greatest British women of the past century. Rich in insights and anecdotes about the people and politics of late Victorian and early modern Britain: Beatrice was the mistress of salon politics. She devoted herself to the causes she and Sidney had at heart - the founding of the London School of Economics, trade unionism, local government, the war against poverty, and their books. The establishment of the Fabian Research Bureau in 1912 and the launching of the New Stateman were both her initiatives. The diary is also, finally, one of the most moving records of old age and dying published in the English language.
