Tony Benn: 12m words and counting ... Photograph: Jane Bown
We've just been to see Tony Benn speak in, of all places, the Barclays Wealth Pavilion. He recommended a website that apparently summarises the history of conflict in the Middle East in 90 seconds, and said, to laughter, that his favourite quotation was: "'Love thy neighbour as thyself' - that's an aspect of Christianity that hasn't made the White House."
He was introduced as the greatest political diarist ever - can this really be true? To my mind, Alan Clark surely beats him on style and entertainment value. Sarfraz Manzoor on the bus here admires Richard Crossman, whereas Matt Seaton on Comment is Free votes for Bernard Donoughue's vitriolic take on the Wilson government. We'll soon find out how Alistair Campbell stacks up. To be a great political diarist you have to be, Matt says, "the soul of indiscretion", and on this score Benn surely falls down.
However, he's certainly profilic. He has published 67 years worth of diary, including latest volume More Time for Politics. He told the audience that he was brought up to believe that you had to give an account of yourself to God, and pictured himself handing all 12m words to St Peter. More seriously, he added that a diary allows you three goes at understanding your life - the first time when you're experiencing something, the second when you dictate it at night "when the pressure's off", and the third "when you read it and realise that you were wrong". So that's what his diaries do for him - what do they do for you?
