Greg Marchildon speaks with Ron Graham about his book, The Coutts Diaries: Power, Politics, and Pierre Trudeau 1973-1981. 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.

Ron Graham is an author and journalist based in Toronto. He has written extensively over many decades on Canadian politics, history, religion, business, and culture.

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