The Coutts Diaries

“The best Canadian political diary that exists” – John English, author, The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

 Jim Coutts, principal secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau from 1975 to 1981, was one of the most powerful men in Canada during those tumultuous years. Equally admired and attacked, respected and reviled, he was, in the words of one contemporary journalist, “a political phenomenon such as Canada has never known before: Machiavelli masquerading as a cherub.” The man who “exercised more backroom power than anyone else in modern Canadian political history,” Coutts not only knew everyone and saw everything at the centre of the action, he wrote it all down. Now, for the first time, his secret diaries have been edited into a single volume that offers an astonishing, behind-the-scenes look into public events and private lives during some of the most dramatic years in Canadian history. Candid, insightful, unprecedented, compelling, The Coutts Diaries is a landmark work, destined to be the most talked-about political book of the year and a timeless classic for generations to come.