Barbara Skelton modelling the “little black dress.” © Baron/Getty Images

On Christmas Day 1946, Evelyn Waugh writes in his diary:

“I made a fair show of geniality throughout the day though the spectacle of a litter of shoddy toys and half-eaten sweets sickened me. Everything is so badly made nowadays that none of the children’s presents seemed to work… I spent the day comparing the Diary of a Nobody with its serialised version in Punch. Laura [his wife] gave me a pot of caviare which I ate a week ago. My mother gave me a copy of Diary of a Nobody… I should like to think that from 29th October [the day after his birthday] onwards friends in all parts of the country were thinking ‘What can we give him for Christmas?’… But it is not so.”

On Christmas Day 1951, Harold Nicolson, at Sissinghurst, writes in his diary:

“I give Vita [Sackville-West] some bath towels (which I like, but she doesn’t), some sherry glasses (which she doesn’t like either), a flag for the tower (which she would have had to get in any case) and a new edition of Larousse (which she hates). Not a successful Christmas-gift ceremony.”

Barbara Skelton, then married to the literary critic Cyril Connolly, writes in her diary about spending Christmas Day 1953 at Ian Fleming’s house in Sussex:

“Since doing the Atticus column [the diary in the Sunday Times], Ian seems to have become a very dried-up and red-veined plain family man… After tea, present-giving. The Awkward Age from Peter [Quennell, literary critic and former boyfriend], a Henry James he gave me ten years ago, although I didn’t tell him so. From Ian some sexy black pants with black lace and a hideous beige galoshes bag. A pair of nylon stockings from Ann [Fleming]. And then, because Cyril had previously said to Ann ‘I wonder how Peter will find a solution between meanness and avoiding to appear so,’ he gave me an extra present of some bath essence. We gave Ian
a bottle of Taittinger blanc de blancs which he had mentioned in his book [Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, published earlier that year], without ever having drunk any. Ann was given an 18th-century Wedgwood paté dish which I would have liked to keep.”

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