The Whispering Gallery: Being Leaves from the Diary of an Ex-Diplomat, which first appeared anonymously in 1926, takes the form of a portrait gallery, consisting of brief biographical sketches of public figures. Three chapters treat single individuals: Lord Northcliffe (‘The Napoleon of Fleet Street’), Lord Leverhulme (‘The Soap King’), and Edward VII (‘The Peacemaker’). The other chapters mostly group several subjects by profession: the ‘Warriors’ include Lord Kitchener, Lord Roberts, John French, and Marshal Joffre; the chapter on ‘Empire-Builders’ juxtaposes Cecil Rhodes with Joseph Chamberlain; the ‘Three Caesars’ are the Kaiser, the Tsar and Franz Josef; the ‘Two Despots’ are Mussolini and Lenin; the ‘Scribblers’ include H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain.

“To move in high social or diplomatic circles is to live in a whispering-gallery. No secret can be breathed without the startling reverberation of rumor from an unexpected quarter. The secrets I breathe afresh in these pages the reader may have heard in the echo of hearsay, an echo which distorts the words that were actually spoken and alters the very character of the speakers themselves.”