Simon Brett chooses diary extracts for 4 December.
There are bad times for some as Noel Coward reviews his relationship with the Inland Revenue in 1955, but better times for others - traveller
Freya Stark is blissful in Arabia in 1937, painter
Benjamin Robert Haydon is ecstatic on his wedding day in 1821, and in 1942 writer Denton Welch has a nostalgic wallow about his old school.
Stereo