“…The descriptions of the coronation of Queen Victoria and the funeral of the Duke of Wellington, for example, are long and full of interesting details. Early chess pieces, coats of arms, seals, architectural details, etc., were often sketched as well as described, and newspaper clippings, prints, timetables, playbills and other ephemera were sometimes inserted. Sir Frederic was a sensitive and articulate critic of all that went on around him, and he documented his life and times as few have done before or since.

Sir Frederic’s fascinating diary deserves to be better known, and for students of medieval and Victorian England, of the history of chess, of book collecting and of connoisseurship, it is a vast and largely untapped treasure trove”. Philip J. Weimerskirch, Edward G. Miner Library, University of Rochester, in Microform Review, May 1977.

17 reels
Reference: MDP