As Peter Catterall, the meticulous editor of these diaries, observes in his introduction, Macmillan valued "character" highly. In his own political life he aspired to display "character" and resilience as he struggled  to renew the national fortunes at a time of defeat and uncertainty. His care about his own reputation for "unflappability", which is made apparent in these pages, reflects that concern, as do his sometimes startlingly caustic comments on fellow politicians of all parties.   

The studied calmness under pressure which Macmillan displayed was, of course, a front, carefully cultivated, behind which a far from easy or tranquil life story unfolded. He was badly wounded at the Somme in 1916 and invalided out of the army. There were early setbacks in his political career, when he found himself a lonely backbench "Tory rebel" at odds with his party over appeasement and economic policy. There was a dark cloud over his life cast by the long adulterous affair between his wife and another Tory MP, Robert Boothby. The diary makes no reference to this, except glancingly in one entry ("21 April. Our wedding day. Sent telegram to Dorothy, who left for Scotland yesterday."). He had need of the consolations of religion (his faithful church-going is carefully noted in the diary) and of literature (even in high office he read more than a hundred books a year).

There was too the sadness common to all men of his war-ravaged generation. This is the diary entry for 19 October 1961:

"Poor Harry Crookshank — my oldest friend — died on Tuesday. I had intended to go to Scotland tonight to shoot for 2 days with Alec Home. But I must go to the funeral tomorrow [...] We went to Summerfields together nearly 60 years ago. We got scholarships at Eton in the same election. We went to Oxford in the same year (1912) and into the Army — Grenadiers — together in 1914. We were both seriously wounded in the same battle — the Somme. We were in H. of Commons together from 1924. I shall miss him very much [...]''

There is a deal of English social history in those words.