[John Whitworth]

That fine pair, George lll and Winston Churchill, give Chris O'Carroll and Bazza chances to win which they took with aplomb.

Lucy Vickery 1 December 2012
In Competition No. 2774 you were invited to supply an extract from the diary of a well-known historical figure that startlingly reverses received ideas about history and the person in question.


John Samson outs Oliver Cromwell as a closet Cavalier in love with all things Irish, while Steve Baldock’s extract from the diary of Jackson Pollock reveals the origins of the great Abstract Expressionist’s drip paintings to be in a ‘drunken paint fight’. Sandra Hardingham lifts the lid on a darker side of Florence Nightingale. It was an entertaining entry: commendations all round. The winners earn £25. The bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard.

The second day of September in the year of our Lord, sixteen hundred and sixty six: Wearied by my wife, fled frantic to Fleet Street and thence to the Fountain inn where, after much musique and wine, was minded to wander eastward and there, sore addled, did stumble on tinder box wherein were pockets containing flint, steel, char cloth and shavings of wood. Staggering hence into Pudding Lane was compelled to pause by Farrinor’s bake house and there, needing light, did strike flint on steel, igniting char cloth and shavings of wood. Such was the mighty blaze and so fearsome the fire’s rapid spread, I did hasten back to my dwelling and there record this account which, judiciously altered, shall later inform my diary. And so to bed, ready to feign surprise when one of the maids espies the fire and stirs me anon to witness the sight.
Alan Millard/Samuel Pepys


4 August, 1914. It’s taken over a month since the faked assassination to get to this remote place, but now we can relax! I never fancied being Emperor of Austria, and those plumed hats were the last straw. No one will miss me, and there are loads of spare archdukes. It was all so easy. A couple of tailors’ dummies and some stage blood, a lot of bribes and, Bob’s, or rather Franz Josef’s your uncle! Doing it in Sarajevo was a masterstroke. No one will have given a monkey’s about bloody Serbia (that would be as daft as Britain joining a war over Belgium!). It’ll all be forgotten by now. Young Princip will have been sprung, collected his cash and disappeared, and some other bugger can keep the peace with Wilhelm, Nikolai and the rest. We’re going to live here quietly, and I’m never even going to look at a newspaper.
Brian Murdoch/From the lost diary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand


Thanks be to God, we shall finally be rid of those burdensome American colonies. Cornwallis took long enough to come to his senses and surrender, but it is done at last. Now let the American rebels defend themselves unassisted against the red Indians. Let them learn how evanescent is the friendship of France and Spain, both of whom are sure to fall like ravenous wolves upon the self-styled ‘United States’ as the Americans persist in pushing westward beyond our proclamation line. Let them contain as best they can the inevitable bloody uprisings of their burgeoning African slave population. And let the world quickly discover how fraudulent is the claim that these ‘states’ are ‘united.’ Without hatred of our rule to bind them together, they are destined to splinter into 13 petty warring rivals, none strong enough to be taken seriously by any European power.
Chris O’Carroll, from the diary of George III


The plott is layed & I do nothing dowt of its successe. Spaine’s fleet shall point to England’s south-west shore at full dispatch with sayls cram’d. Forwarn’d of their comming I shall declair myselfe so littel afeard of Spanish might & so certen of my own superiour skill (no lye in that forsooth!) that I shall make pretens to have time enough to finishe a game at boles afore I need ingage. By such delaies al the advantadge shall be with the Spanyard to the end that the battel will onely bee short, with the spareing of much bloud and many good men’s lives. And by Providence we shall ‘change a feable Queen for a propper King (Catholiq but no matter) & I shall becomme a full Admirall & gett unfetter’d passage to Darien & al the spoyles therein. Caramba!
Sir Francis Drake revealed by W.J. Webster


First Norway, now Dunkirk. Hitler’s kicked us out of Europe. Why can’t our bloody troops fight? And you can bet the bloody Frogs will soon turn tail and run. I thought his job would be easy, give ‘em the ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat, victory at all costs’ speech, lob a few whizz-bangs from entrenched positions, then strike a deal with Hitler once the casualty toll mounted, letting him swan off to scupper Stalin while I’d run the Empire in peace. It was a brilliant plan. Brilliant! It revived my career. But now I’ll look a complete oaf if unless I live up to the patriotic bombast and plan for a long war. Hitler won’t negotiate now. He’s cock of the dunghill, laughing at me. It’s not fair. I should be laughing at him. That bloody fool Chamberlain. What was so important about bloody Poland?
Basil Ransome-Davies/Churchill


Same-old same-old. In the morning, two women patients who frankly would benefit from a good seeing-to and a weedy specimen who enjoys wearing his mummy’s undies. Then a man with a goat problem. Honestly, the things people get up to, but it’s all money in the bank to me. And trade has definitely improved since Jung went off his trolley and started seeing things. But a Swiss, what do you expect? Waiters, that’s all they are. Had a decent veal chop for lunch and lectured in the afternoon on the Id. The punters really go for that. They love the idea of an inner primordial monster. Sex and violence, that what it is basically, it never fails. Dress it up as science and you’ve hooked the intellectuals. Attended a neurologists’ meeting in the evening — imbeciles, all of them — and was ready for my cocoa by 9.30.
G.M. Davis/Sigmund Freud