'Thoroughly irresistable...sparkles with delicious indiscretion and startling observations' -- Country Life 20051201 'The Milk of Paradise is the provocative last testament of a never dull diarist' -- Catholic Herald 20051209 'As sharp and amusing, as generous and jaundiced, as ever' -- TLS 'Just as querulous, misanthropic, greedy, vain and fascinating as ever. One reads, one deplores -- and reads on with vindictive delight' -- Patrick Skene-Caitling, Sunday Telegraph 'The greatest diarist of our times -- funny, feline and disconcertingly honest, wielding a rapier to Alan Clark's cudgel' -- Jeremy Lewis, The Oldie 'The elegiac tone, the wintriness, gets to be very moving...A major work of literature' -- Roger Lewis, Spectator 'His wonderful diaries demonstrates to anyone with eyes to see that he was a superb chronicler of the human condition' -- Hugh Massingberd, Spectator 'Funny, shrewd, waspish and wise ... Lees-Milne was the greatest diarist of this century, and one of its finest writers' -- Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review 20051001 'Nothing short of phenomenal ! surely the finest diary of the 20th Century, truly a great masterpiece of English literature' -- Hugh Massingberd, Country Life 20051013 'Unique ! a 300-page gossip column, studded with apercus worthy of a great novel' -- Harry Mount, Daily Telegraph 20051029 'Alert and idiosyncratic ! James Lees-Milne is without question one of the finest diarists of the 20th century' -- Selina Hastings, Spectator 20051029 'Crammed with bizarre and funny anecdotes ... this volume splendidly rounds off an exceptional enterprise.' -- The Sunday Times 20051106 'It is his appealingly genuine tone of self-deprecationthat makes so many of his entries endearing.' -- Simon Blow, Independent on Sunday 20051106 'Amusingly irritating, he gives you a fascinating glimpse of what remains of society life today' -- Alan Titchmarsh, Sunday Express 20051204 'Deserves to be celebrated for [its] candour and compulsive readability' -- The Times, Michael Grove 20051203 'The anecdotes are priceless.' -- Observer 20060701 'Altogether an excellent mystery story, which grips the reader all the way through. Contains many ideas which would interest book groups.' -- New Books Mag 20060701 '[Lees-Milne's] final volume sparkles as brightly as its 11 predecessors, still full of gossip, sharp of eye and ear and only occasionally malicious. A bit of a snob? Maybe, but who cares? His delight in both people and places is positively touching' -- Sunday Telegraph / Seven 20060701 '[Lees-Milne's] journals are famous for their bitchiness but, in the long run, they are more impressive for their honesty and the way he communicates the small sensations of being alive' -- The Sunday Times 20060701 'Some diarists decline in interest as they age. Not Lees-Milne !wonderful, addictive' -- Evening Standard 20060710 'At times extremely funny, at other times a royal pain in the arse' -- Sunday Tribune 20060730
