The volume is a plain notebook and mostly comprises diary entries. Sassoon has added watercolour blocks to the printed patterned paper covers. There is also a watercolour frontispiece (/127v) of segments of colour arranged around a face and the words 'Journal 1939 1940'.

The volume also includes:

- preparatory notes for an autobiography: /74v, /134-135v.

- prose passage entitled 'A Note on Candlelight': /56v.

- draft of a poem entitled 'In the Rose Garden', begins 'Out in the garden with my tiny son': /51v.

- watercolour of seven faces with varied expressions, one for each day of the week: /1r.

- pasted in press cuttings: /122. re rainfall figures for Henford, Warminster; /18v. Announcement of the death of W.B. Yeats, together with an anonymous appreciation; /20v. re the marriage of Oliver Gatty to Penelope Noel Tower; /103. Sassoon's poem 'Good News'; /102. re the Arthur Skemp Memorial Lecture given by Sassoon at Bristol University.

N.B. There are no loose enclosures or detached folios. The original pagination/foliation is irregular and omits final/leading pages. Foliation in square brackets was added by the cataloguing archivist.