It was naturally a matter of some concern to the pupils and friends of the late Dr Norman Sykes when it became known recently that the Lambeth Library had acquired a manuscript diary of William Wake for the years of his episcopate as bishop of Lincoln and for the first ten years of his tenure as archbishop of Canterbury. The diary was, of course, quite unknown to Dr Sykes, and it seems right that there should be some critical examination of it in relation to the magisterial two-volume biography of Wake, which was published in 1957.