The eighth volume of James Lees-Milne's acclaimed diaries is unlike its predecessors, in that it shows Lees-Milne developing an overwhelming tendresse for a much younger man. As candid in writing about himself as about others, he records the doubt, happiness, guilt and other turbulence that accompany an emotion he did not expect to feel again. This is the first volume to be edited not by the diarist himself but his literary executor, the friend in...