Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (13 April 1928 – 5 September 1999) was a British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), author and diarist.

[2] His three-volume Alan Clark Diaries contains a candid account of political life under Thatcher and a description of the weeks preceding his death, which he continued to write until he could no longer focus on the page.

In September 1940, with the Luftwaffe threatening south-east England, the Clarks moved their son to a safer location at Cheltenham College Junior School.

Clark's first book, The Donkeys (1961), was a revisionist history of the British Expeditionary Force's (BEF) campaigns at the beginning of the First World War.

The book covers Western Front operations during 1915, including the offensives at Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge and Loos, and ending with the enforced resignation of Sir John French as commander-in-chief of the BEF, and his replacement by Douglas Haig.

Clark's choice of subject was strongly influenced by Lord Lee of Fareham, a family friend who had never forgotten what he saw as the shambles of the BEF.

[10] On publication, The Donkeys received very supportive comments from Lord Beaverbrook, who recommended the work to Winston Churchill, and The Times printed a positive review.

[14] Field Marshal Montgomery later told Clark it was "A Dreadful Tale: You have done a good job in exposing the total failure of the generalship".

"[19] Graham Stewart, Clark's researcher for a later political history that he would write entitled The Tories, noted: "Alan wasn't beyond quoting people selectively to make them look bad".

[20] Clark went on to publish several more works of military history through the 1960s, including Barbarossa in 1965 examining the Operation Barbarossa offensive of the Second World War; he also tried his hand at novel writing, but none of the subsequent books were as commercially successful or drew the same attention as The Donkeys had achieved, and he abandoned the path of military history in the mid-1970s to pursue a professional career in national politics.

[24] He subsequently became MP for Plymouth Sutton at the February 1974 general election with a majority of 8,104,[25] when Harold Wilson took over from Edward Heath as prime minister of a minority Labour government.

During the subsequent Party leadership contest he was urged by Airey Neave to vote for Margaret Thatcher, but he is thought to have favoured Willie Whitelaw.

Clark received his first ministerial posting as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Employment in 1983, where he was responsible for moving the approval of regulations relating to equal pay in the House of Commons.

[33] Clark became bored with life outside politics and returned to Parliament as member for Kensington and Chelsea in the election of 1997, becoming critical of NATO's campaign in the Balkans.

[34][35] Clark held strong views on British unionism, racial difference, social class, and was in support of animal rights, nationalist protectionism and Euroscepticism[citation needed].

[36] When called to account, however, Clark denied the comment had any racist overtones, claiming it had simply been a reference to the president of Gabon, Omar Bongo.

[39][40] Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of Clark as "extraordinary, amusing, irreverent, but with real conviction and belief, and behind the headlines, kind and thoughtful.

[44] Clark kept a regular diary from 1955 until August 1999 (during his second spell as a Member of Parliament) when he was incapacitated due to the onset of the brain tumour which was to be the cause of his death a month later.

The diaries covering the period 1983 to 1992 were published after he left the House of Commons, deciding not to seek re-election to his Plymouth Sutton seat.

Published in 1993 and known simply as Diaries (although later subtitled In Power), they have been recognised as a definitive account of the downfall of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

They caused a minor embarrassment at the time with their descriptions of senior Conservative politicians such as Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd, and Kenneth Clarke.

The diaries reveal recurring worries about Japanese militarism but his real views are often not clear because he enjoyed making "tongue in cheek" remarks to the discomfiture of those he believed to be fools, as in his sympathy for a British version of National Socialism.

[47] Before his death in 1999, Clark had started work on the prequel to the 1983–1992 Diaries to cover his entry in politics, from seeking a Conservative Association to adopt him as their Parliamentary Candidate in 1972 until the 1983 general election.

The diaries include much reference to Clark's love of his chalet at Zermatt, his Scottish estate at Eriboll and the architecture of and country around Saltwood Castle, his home in Kent.

In 1958, Clark, aged 30, married 16-year-old (Caroline) Jane, daughter of Colonel Leslie Brindley Bream Beuttler OBE of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and a descendant on her mother's side of the Scottish ornithologist William Robert Ogilvie-Grant, grandson of the 6th Earl of Seafield.