Old Men Forget is a 1953 autobiography by Duff Cooper, Viscount Norwich, detailing his Victorian childhood, Edwardian youth, and work in literature and politics.
Publishing history, content and reception
The title is taken from the St Crispin's Day Speech by King Henry in Act IV, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's Henry V:
<poem>
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. The publisher Rupert Hart-Davis, who was Cooper's nephew, published the first edition in November 1953.
thumb|upright|alt=head and shoulders photograph of man in lounge suit, with dark, slicked back hair and a small moustache|Cooper in 1941
The book covers Cooper's early years – his schooldays at Eton, studies and socialising at Oxford – followed by his army service in the First World War, in which he fought in the trenches and was one of the few members of his intimate circle to survive the war. In peacetime he was an official in the Foreign Office until entering Parliament in 1924. The book includes an account of Field Marshal Allenby's struggles with David Lloyd George over Egypt, seen from Cooper's viewpoint as a public servant. Harold Nicolson in The Observer called the book "an autobiography which, in its perfect balance between the objective and the subjective … furnishes an example of the way in which this sort of thing should be done."
The book was reissued by Faber & Faber in 2011.