The two diaries are in matching ruled notebooks, stitched into worn pink card covers: leaf dimensions 22 x 17 cm. Each notebook thumb-indexed with the months printed in French. Numerous loose and rearranged pages. Closely and neatly written, with text clear and complete, on aged paper. Each notebook is numbered on the front cover, with 'JOHN GAWSWORTH | (1246619 | SGT. T. I. F. ARMSTRONG R.A.F.)' On the cover of each notebook Gawsworth directs that they be dispatched to his 'literary executor' Maurice Wollman on the event of his death. Leader of the neo-Georgian movement, and editor of Poetry Review, Gawsworth was well-connected in the English literary world, admired and loathed in equal measure, and a writer who never achieved his full potential. These diaries - a nice mixture of detailed and descriptive - are especially valuable for the light they cast on the frontline wartime activities of a sensitive and deeply-poetic sensibility. Gawsworth joined the RAF in 1941, serving, according to his entry in the New DNB, 'on Algerian, Tunisian, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns, and in India, in 1942-5'. He left with the rank of Flying Officer in 1946. He was, as he notes on the title-page of each notebook, Délégué Général pour l'Angleterre de la Société des Écrivains de l'Afrique du Nord (Tunis, 1943), as well as 'Fellow & Medallist of the Royal Society of Literature' (title, 'Part II.') and member of the Salamander Society of Poets (Cairo, 1944).