Next week the edited diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (1887-1981) are published by Orion in Britain."Tommy" Lascelles was private secretary to four monarchs, and his diaries reveal the inside story of the Abdication, the royal family during the Second World War and the Princess Margaret-Peter Townsend affair.

You can read extracts here. If you're interested in the high politics of twentieth-century Britain or even just peeking behind the curtain that conceals the machinations of the British establishment, you'll surely enjoy his damning assessment of Edward VIII as prince, king, and exile."I can't help thinking that the best thing that could happen to him, and to the country, would be for him to break his neck.""God forgive me," said Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister."I have often thought the same." The year was 1927, nine years before Baldwin, once again prime minister, presided over the constitutional crisis that led to Edward abdicating the throne to marry the twice-divorced Mrs. Wallis Simpson.