Mrs. Thatcher's Minister: The Private Diaries of Alan Clark.

• Author: McLellan, Diana

If a man lies to his diary, as Lyn Nofziger remarked during Josh Steiner's Whitewater testimony, it's not a diary, it's a liary.

If he is as truthful as both nature and nurture allow, like H.R. Haldeman, it is a revelation.

And if, standing equally close to the throne, he writes with total candor, indiscretion, and relish--not only about the mighty who surround him, but of his own ambition, posturing, malice, irrationality, lust, snobbery, power struggles, and pleasure in the discomfiture of rivals; and if he is a gentleman and a scholar to boot, an engaging and rounded man devoid of hypocrisy, one who rejoices in his possessions and sexuality, yet is keenly attuned to the brevity of life, the joy of family, the beauty of nature, and the fun of politics--well, to start with, you can bet that he's not in Washington.

Mrs. Thatcher's Minister: The Private Diaries of Alan Clark is, of course, British. Part Pepys, part Trollope, part Yes, Minister, part Tome Jones, it is

the juiciest socio-political read of the nineties.

Alan Clark, son of the late Sir Kenneth Clark of Civilisation fame, kept these vivid diaries during his eight years in three successive Tory administrations in Britain.

The very first entry braces you for the ride ahead. Here's a walk around the lush grounds of Saltwood, Clark's castle in Kent; a confrontation with a trespasser ("I cursed him, and he crumpled disarmingly"); Clark's firm conviction that his stepmother, Nolwyn, Comtesse de Janze, had poisoned his dying father; his poignant regret that he had failed to enter fully into his father's aesthetic world; his expectations of an upcoming political campaign ("Wotya going to do for me then, guv?"); a speech he made in the House; a fellow M.P.'s wager that he'll get a government appointment from Mrs. Thatcher; and his lust for a busty new au pair in one of the cottages on his estate.

This last is to be a recurring note. Despite what is evidently a happy marriage to a woman who delights him, women of all conditions occupy Clark's reveries and his diaries.

"I'm madly in love with Francis Holland [his 22-year-old Labour Party opponent]," he writes. "I suspect she's not as thin and gawky as she seems, her hair is always lovely and shiny. Perhaps I can distract her at the count on Thursday and kiss her in one of those big janitor's cupboards off the Lower Guildhall..."

"I can only properly enjoy a carol service," he observes one Christmas, "if I am having an illicit affair with someone in the congregation. Why is this? Perhaps because they are essentially pagan, not Christian, celebrations."

Other objects of his desire range from a plump young shopgirl on a train "whose delightful globes bounced prominently, but happily, under a rope-knitted jersey," to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

"She sat next to me (first time ever) and...I radiated a protective feeling--and, indeed, feelings of another kind. She has...