Don's Diary

Thursday. "Fascinating", "compelling", "a tour de force", "slapdash", "jejune" and "sloppy" were joined today by "dazzling" as a description of my new biography of Hugh Gaitskell. The range of adjectives, and the fact that the book launch is on Tuesday, explain my neurosis. I have no idea what I am going to say at the launch.

Moreover, at lunch the other day, a friend who used to work at Blackwells told me about the warehouse that stored unsold copies of the books they published. Like the warehouse full of alien artefacts in the basement of the Pentagon that features in an X-Files episode. I go to sleep dreaming of the Richard Cohen books warehouse full of 4,000 unsold copies of Hugh Gaitskell, with a background soundtrack of the murmuring of reviewers - jejune, jejune, jejune . . .

Friday. I wake thinking about 4,000 unsold copies and rush to the newsagent to buy all the papers. He has become used to my sleepwalking shape tearing through the pages of the Daily Mail to see if any extracts have been published - then buying all the broadsheets. This morning I also buy the Ham and High. Nothing in the qualities, which provokes a mixture of relief - no more negative adjectives to deal with - and frustration. However, the piece has appeared in the Ham and High - and looks good. Blair has leaked plans that he wants to break the links with the unions: it is October 1959 all over again, but whereas Hugh never wanted to break the link, with Blair it is only a matter of time.

Normality raises its head when a friend rings to say he is going to Waitrose. The opportunity of doing the shopping early is too good to miss and I shelve everything to buy groceries with him. When I get back there is a message from The Times to say they are going to use my piece on Saturday. I phone my wife and my mother. My friend and I meet up again in the late afternoon for a game of tennis. The day on which I have an op-ed piece accepted for a national is the wrong day to play me at tennis: I win the first set 6:1. I get back to find a fax of proofs from The Times. I phone my mum again.

Saturday. I wake thinking of 4,000 unsold copies and the reviewers are now shouting in the background. I saunter - it is the only word - down to the newsagent's via the recycling dump where I get rid of a couple of tonnes of newsprint. Nothing, again, in the Mail. First it was a book about the Romanovs and now it is something about a Shirley Valentine. Buy all the papers. The weight has doubled from yesterday. The piece in The Times is next to Peter Riddell, which makes me glow. Saturday's reviews add "ponderous", but this is offset by being a "master" of old politics. My study is now buried under a mountain of newspapers and four billion A4 sheets of drafts. I decide that as we are going down to IKEA tomorrow it is time to throw Mr Gaitskell out. A book launch is a curious thing. For me it is the end of four years' work and intellectually I am only really interested in the next project, but for everyone else, this is a new book, a fresh experience - which is either going to be slapdash or dazzling, depending on whom you read. About five bin bags later and my study emerges - it is painted an attractive green colour that I dimly remember seeing before. I realise, as I am about to go to sleep, that I have no idea what I am going to say on Tuesday night.

Sunday. I wake worrying that I have nothing to say and thinking about 4,000 . . . The newsagent, who has become progressively more pleased to see me as the week has gone by, greets me with a cheerful "Is it in today?" The Mail is now running something about Richard Burton - which means I suppose that they will not be serialising Mr Gaitskell. I stagger home under the weight of the Sundays. This morning the book is "opaque" and "sensitive". It is also "post-socialist". I have never been described as "post" anything before and glow for the rest of the morning. The glow fades as we approach IKEA. Half an hour before opening time hundreds of people are waiting around outside. A couple of hours of IKEA completely deflates the feelings of grandeur and achievement that had been building and we leave, with this "sensitive" post-socialist writer expressing the worst excesses of IKEA rage. I have never left this store without feeling the urge to burn it down. It is so "nice". Collapsing into bed I think about the speech again. Should I make a joke? Should I mention that I would like a Labour government? I drop off rehearsing to myself and dream of a dazzling yet sensitive post-socialist writer climbing a mountain of unsold books.

Monday. Publication day. All over the country people can now buy the book and marvel at the slapdash passages. Nothing much happens. Publishing a book is actually a series of anti-climaxes, usually followed by depression. I buy some food for the party and try to work out what I am going to say. Tomorrow I will face Roy Hattersley and Barbara Castle, plus a room full of family, journalists, politicians and academics. Many will have read the book and will be expecting me to make the appropriate remarks. I will look up and all I will be able to think about is: which one of you thinks this is slapdash and which one thinks it is dazzling?

Brian Brivati

Senior lecturer in modern British history at Kingston University. Hugh Gaitskell: A biography is published by Richard Cohen Books.