Subjects include: a stay at Cap d'Ail in the south of France, September 1953; painting and work on a speech for [the Conservative Party Conference] at Margate [Kent] and trying to decide about the future [following Churchill's stroke in June]; thoughts of writing about the Victorian political scene; an attack by Randolph Churchill against the press; a visit from Tom O'Brien, President of the Trades Union Congress; the state of the French Government; the little yellow cat at Chartwell [Kent] and a new kitten; reaction in France to Churchill's Margate speech [on West Germany's part in European defence]; Churchill's finances, including the sale of a farm and the money from the Nobel Prize for Literature.