Although published after his death, Michael De-la-Noy, in his introduction to the 1984 edition, states that the "journals" title was the author's own,[1] as Welch had never intended merely to keep a daily diary.

"[4] James Methuen-Campbell has noted that the journals (now in the Denton Welch Archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin) appear to have been written "with a definite eye on posterity".

[5] Having been left the invalided victim of a near-fatal collision between his bicycle and a motor car in 1935, Welch was acutely aware of his mortality, and it seems to have been rarely far from his thoughts.

In the view of Michael De-la-Noy, these undoubted shortcomings are counterbalanced by "a consistent honesty about himself" which, given the hugely challenging physical circumstances he faced, display "a perfectly justified self-indulgence".

This version was of necessity heavily edited, ultimately losing of half the overall content, because, as Brooke noted in his introduction: "... a number of the omitted passages, though not legally actionable, might well cause offence or embarrassment to the persons concerned..."[9] As Phillips adds, "[t]his is the risk one runs... in publishing the diary of a man just dead.