Alan Clark (1928 -1999) was a British Conservative MP and diarist. Clark is perhaps best known from the years that he served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and in the Privy Council. Despite being a slightly controversial character politically, he wrote throughout his life and parts of his diaries were published and subsequently televised. He was the author of several books of military history, including his controversial work The Donkeys (1961), which is considered to have inspired the musical satire, Oh, What a Lovely War! And Aces High, The War in the Air Over the Western Front 1914-18 (1973)