Days Like These

9 January 1965

RICHARD NIXON,

politician (pictured),

writes in his memoirs:

"After a small party to celebrate my 52nd birthday, I sat in my study to look back on the past year and look ahead into the future. I reflected on the fact that Winston Churchill had been in his mid-fifties when he lost his position of leadership in the House of Commons in 1929, and most of his contemporaries had then written him off as a political leader. But Churchill refused to write himself off. I took heart from the example of his refusal to give up... I wrote down some `new year's resolutions for 1965': Set great goals; Daily rest; Brief vacations; Knowledge of all weaknesses; Better use of time; Begin writing book; Golf or some other kind of daily exercise; Articles or speeches on provocative new international and national issues.

I put down my yellow pad, turned out the light and stared into the fire"

10 January 1969

RICHARD BURTON,

actor, notes in his journal:

"Elizabeth [Taylor, his wife] was astonishingly drunk even as I got to lunch. I don't recollect her before being incoherent from drink. I expect it's from the drugs she's forced to take, not the booze. Christ, I hope she's all right. It would be frightful to live the rest of our lives in an alcoholic haze, seeing the world through fumes of spirits and cigarette smoke. never quite sure what you did or said the day before, what you read, whether wise or foolish, tardy or soon. God, I'm going to have a whisky and soda right now."

11 January 1942

IAN MORRISON,

journalist, observes Kuala Lumpur awaiting the

arrival of the Japanese:

"Civil authority had broken down. The European officials and residents had all evacuated. There was looting in progress such as I have never seen before. Most of the big department stores had already been whistled clean. There was now a general sack of all shops and premises. The streets were knee-deep in boxes and cardboard cartons and paper.

Looters could be seen carrying every imaginable prize away with them. Here was one man with a Singer sewing-machine over his shoulder, there a Chinese with a long roll of linoleum tied to the back of his bicycle, here two Tamils with a great sack of rice suspended from a pole, there a young Tamil struggling with a great box of the best Norwegian sardines."

Ian Irvine