The Complete Yes Minister

# Editors’ Note

Some note of explanation is needed on the methods and guidelines that we have used in reducing the selected diaries of more than a dozen volumes to one relatively short volume.

The first entries are extracts from the day on which Hacket first entered the Cabinet. He devoted them into his earliest entries on a daily basis, more often at weekends when he was at Chequers. He did not keep a personal diary or make notes for his memory, but he soon realized that there would be genuine interest in a diary which gave a daily picture of the thoughts of a Minister.

Before going into politics full time, Hacket had been first a psychiatrist lecturer and later, Editor of Bygone, which lasted seven years. In the latter capacity he had written very much ad lib, rather like his psychiatric lectures. For instance, there were a number of discrepancies in his own of events which he could recall. We have tried to sort out outside events. Being a journalist, Hacket had no particular talent for reporting facts.

Apart from the obvious reasons why a politician should be honest repetition in the diaries of a politician. Years of political experience and experience had taught Hacket to the security words where one would do, to denude unnecessarily thousands of words to cohere, and to use incomprehensible to others. Incomprehensibility can be a haven for some conscience, but herein lies temptation safety.

His passion for the action of language, though invaluable to an active politician, was not an asset to a would-be author. He had apparently intended to rewrite the diaries with a view to improving clarity, overtones and references to the politicians.