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The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists
'A diary is an assassin's cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen', wrote William Soutar in 1934. But a diary is also a place for recording everyday thoughts and special occasions, private fears and hopeful dreams. The Assassin's Cloak gathers together some of the most entertaining and inspiring entries for each day of the year, as writers ranging from Queen Victoria to Andy Warhol, Samuel Pepys to Adrian Mole, pen their musings on the historic and the mundane.
Spanning centuries and international in scope, this peerless anthology pays tribute to a genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all literary forms.
This new updated edition is published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the book's original publication.
Spanning centuries and international in scope, this peerless anthology pays tribute to a genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all literary forms.
This new updated edition is published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the book's original publication.
704 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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1101 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
April 20, 2015
Disappointing. I have read enough diaries to know that these are not "the world's greatest diarists" -- or rather, some of them are nothing special and the ones who are good diarists benefit not at all from being taken in small out-of-order chunks. I'm giving up after reading the fourth entry on the Titanic in as many pages. I'll stick with just picking people who are actually interesting to me and reading their diaries straight through.
Favorite line: "I never saw Pigg so drunk in my life." --Rev. James Woodforde
Favorite line: "I never saw Pigg so drunk in my life." --Rev. James Woodforde
March 14, 2018
If you love the voyeuristic intimacy of reading other people's diaries and journals, or the immediacy of primary historical sources, then this is a book to pounce upon. It's huge, just under 700pp. but there are delights to be found everywhere.
The breadth of extracts is enticing - though, given the historicised emergence of the concept of 'the self', the majority of them come from the twentieth century, with a fair number from the nineteenth, dropping off backwards so that the earliest are from the seventeenth century and comprise solely extracts from Pepys, of course, and John Evelyn. We could then, trace, the development of interiority from the presence of intimate diaries, and the increasing solipsism of modernity.
That's not, though, the intention of the editors. Instead, they have collected extracts that span chronology, writers, topics and length. They have decided to organise the offerings via a yearly calendar and under each date, e.g. January 1, we find an assortment of extracts spanning from 1662 to the late 1990s, and from well-known diarists (Pepys, Alan Bennett, Vera Brittain, Noel Coward) to more unexpected voices (André Gide, Che Guevara, Alice James) and the unknown (to me, at least: Philip Hone, a nineteenth century mayor of New York; Edith Velmans, a Dutch Jew during WW2; the wonderful Joan Wyndham, a dabbler who lived through WW2 in London).
The chronological arrangement doesn't always work so that we find Wyndham's piece on the VE Day celebrations in June while later months are still throwing up extracts from earlier in the war. And, to be honest, there are probably too many WW2 extracts - not just do they unbalance the book overall (however significant it was to C20th history), but they are frequently accessible in other books.
Not all the pieces are as grave: there are wonderfully bitchy anecdotes from the likes of Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh and Kenneth Williams, and first hand responses to big events such as the sinking of the Titanic or the death of Princess Diana.
This is a wonderful book to either dip into (maybe on a daily basis so that you can share a day with diarists across time) or from cover to cover - I did the latter, greedily: it's so easy to keep turning the pages not knowing what you'll stumble across next!
The breadth of extracts is enticing - though, given the historicised emergence of the concept of 'the self', the majority of them come from the twentieth century, with a fair number from the nineteenth, dropping off backwards so that the earliest are from the seventeenth century and comprise solely extracts from Pepys, of course, and John Evelyn. We could then, trace, the development of interiority from the presence of intimate diaries, and the increasing solipsism of modernity.
That's not, though, the intention of the editors. Instead, they have collected extracts that span chronology, writers, topics and length. They have decided to organise the offerings via a yearly calendar and under each date, e.g. January 1, we find an assortment of extracts spanning from 1662 to the late 1990s, and from well-known diarists (Pepys, Alan Bennett, Vera Brittain, Noel Coward) to more unexpected voices (André Gide, Che Guevara, Alice James) and the unknown (to me, at least: Philip Hone, a nineteenth century mayor of New York; Edith Velmans, a Dutch Jew during WW2; the wonderful Joan Wyndham, a dabbler who lived through WW2 in London).
The chronological arrangement doesn't always work so that we find Wyndham's piece on the VE Day celebrations in June while later months are still throwing up extracts from earlier in the war. And, to be honest, there are probably too many WW2 extracts - not just do they unbalance the book overall (however significant it was to C20th history), but they are frequently accessible in other books.
Not all the pieces are as grave: there are wonderfully bitchy anecdotes from the likes of Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh and Kenneth Williams, and first hand responses to big events such as the sinking of the Titanic or the death of Princess Diana.
This is a wonderful book to either dip into (maybe on a daily basis so that you can share a day with diarists across time) or from cover to cover - I did the latter, greedily: it's so easy to keep turning the pages not knowing what you'll stumble across next!
December 9, 2017
Diaries are secret.
Diaries, when shared with intimates make them discreet. Discreet diaries are boring.
A secret diary is akin to infidelity.
Only good girls keep diaries, bad girls don’t have the time.
- These are some of the descriptions of diaries in this anthology of the world’s great diarists, among them: Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Noel Coward, Joseph Goebbels, Barbara Pym and Kenneth Williams.
The importance of a diary as a literary form is that it:
1) Records history as and when it happened from people who actually lived through those events.
2) Is direct and off the cuff, capturing emotions, thoughts, and ideas formed in the heat of the historical incident.
3) Provides snapshots of time frozen years apart on the same day of the year - e.g. contrast a 4th of July celebration in 1832 vs. one in 1991.
Thus we get clear pictures of the carnage of the Great London Fire by Samuel Pepys, the filth on the streets of Edinburgh in 1761 by John Wesley, the thoughts and emotions of people in England and Germany preparing for war from Barbara Pym and “Chips” Channon, and Goebbels’ meditations on how he invented the “fake news” concept back in the 1930’s. And if you broke a tooth in 1854, you lived with the gap!
This anthology groups entries from a wide selection of diarists that were made on the same day of the year, running from 1st January to 31st December over the last four centuries. So, for any particular day in the year, you could get entries taking place on that same day in 1666, 1774, 1880 and 1991; the progress of history, politics, science and technology is evident as the centuries roll over. The weakness in this approach however is that no single subject is covered in depth, although the anthology hovers around many pivotal events in history: the two world wars, The Great Fire of London, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Prince Charles-Princess Diana marriage, the evolution of movie making, and the lives of great writers. In going one day at a time in chronological order, we come back to each of these seminal events repeatedly at various points of the book. Each visit helps to re-stoke memory of the last read of that particular subject, but at the end of the book you are left with a disjointed understanding of all these great events. One tends to skim the entries made by lesser known personalities, even though those lesser known ones were selected due to their more on-the-spot, visceral descriptions. One also has to read each entry to find the good nuggets, for not all will interest a reader.
Anecdotes are generously offered:
1) Shepherds in Corfu preferred ewes to wives because the former didn’t talk - Lawrence Durrell
2) Kafka wrote his diary during WWI but never once mentioned the war
3) Marilyn Monroe had a desperate longing to be intellectual, but didn’t have the brain to achieve it - Noel Coward
4) “Oxford people” expected their peers to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover despite its ban in England at the time
5) Virginia Woolf preferred poetry to prose as she got older. She also worried about her looks and reviews of her books, and she didn’t like people.
6) Tolstoy lacked modesty, but was shy in society - self admitted.
This is not everyone’s book. But as a novelist I got value from being able to immerse myself in the last four centuries and be taken on a guided tour of them by the ghosts of people who had lived during those times, feeling their fears, joys and frustrations. So if you want to know about subjects as diverse and unrelated as how a monk lived in Grenoble in 1927, or how life was on board the Antarctica expedition of 1903 with its tainted food, then you may find something in this book.
Diaries, when shared with intimates make them discreet. Discreet diaries are boring.
A secret diary is akin to infidelity.
Only good girls keep diaries, bad girls don’t have the time.
- These are some of the descriptions of diaries in this anthology of the world’s great diarists, among them: Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Noel Coward, Joseph Goebbels, Barbara Pym and Kenneth Williams.
The importance of a diary as a literary form is that it:
1) Records history as and when it happened from people who actually lived through those events.
2) Is direct and off the cuff, capturing emotions, thoughts, and ideas formed in the heat of the historical incident.
3) Provides snapshots of time frozen years apart on the same day of the year - e.g. contrast a 4th of July celebration in 1832 vs. one in 1991.
Thus we get clear pictures of the carnage of the Great London Fire by Samuel Pepys, the filth on the streets of Edinburgh in 1761 by John Wesley, the thoughts and emotions of people in England and Germany preparing for war from Barbara Pym and “Chips” Channon, and Goebbels’ meditations on how he invented the “fake news” concept back in the 1930’s. And if you broke a tooth in 1854, you lived with the gap!
This anthology groups entries from a wide selection of diarists that were made on the same day of the year, running from 1st January to 31st December over the last four centuries. So, for any particular day in the year, you could get entries taking place on that same day in 1666, 1774, 1880 and 1991; the progress of history, politics, science and technology is evident as the centuries roll over. The weakness in this approach however is that no single subject is covered in depth, although the anthology hovers around many pivotal events in history: the two world wars, The Great Fire of London, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Prince Charles-Princess Diana marriage, the evolution of movie making, and the lives of great writers. In going one day at a time in chronological order, we come back to each of these seminal events repeatedly at various points of the book. Each visit helps to re-stoke memory of the last read of that particular subject, but at the end of the book you are left with a disjointed understanding of all these great events. One tends to skim the entries made by lesser known personalities, even though those lesser known ones were selected due to their more on-the-spot, visceral descriptions. One also has to read each entry to find the good nuggets, for not all will interest a reader.
Anecdotes are generously offered:
1) Shepherds in Corfu preferred ewes to wives because the former didn’t talk - Lawrence Durrell
2) Kafka wrote his diary during WWI but never once mentioned the war
3) Marilyn Monroe had a desperate longing to be intellectual, but didn’t have the brain to achieve it - Noel Coward
4) “Oxford people” expected their peers to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover despite its ban in England at the time
5) Virginia Woolf preferred poetry to prose as she got older. She also worried about her looks and reviews of her books, and she didn’t like people.
6) Tolstoy lacked modesty, but was shy in society - self admitted.
This is not everyone’s book. But as a novelist I got value from being able to immerse myself in the last four centuries and be taken on a guided tour of them by the ghosts of people who had lived during those times, feeling their fears, joys and frustrations. So if you want to know about subjects as diverse and unrelated as how a monk lived in Grenoble in 1927, or how life was on board the Antarctica expedition of 1903 with its tainted food, then you may find something in this book.
April 2, 2018
“There are few things quite as capable of inducing guilt as an empty diary."This dip-in doorstop sat tenaciously on my bedside table for many months waiting to catch me between far shorter and physically manageable books. I enjoyed reading a few entries each night before settling down to sleep, the only drawback being the sheer heavy weight of the damned thing – nodding off with it propped in front of my bespectacled face proved to be something of a hazard.
I’ve always taken pleasure in ‘eavesdropping’ on the private thoughts and opinions of creative people – not celebrity-types, I might add – but writers, artist and other engaging characters from the past. The Assassin's Cloak, which is chock full of diary entries from the pens of esteemed and fascinating folk throughout history was, therefore, my ideal choice for bedtime reading.
As one would expect, the likes of Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn and Queen Victoria are included in this collection, but there are also figures such as Florence Farmborough, a young woman who went to Russia and became a Red Cross nurse at the Front for the duration of First World War; the Irish writer and film director, Neil Jordan; notorious ex-con Jimmy Boyle; and even Sam’s missus, Elizabeth Pepys.
There are entries for every day of the month and every month of the year, so if, for example, you turn to 2 April you will find extracts from the journals of Simone de Beauvoir (1947), Eleanor Coppola (1976), Andy Warhol (1980) and Alec Guinness (1996). To pick another random date, on 22 September you’ll discover Fanny Kemble (1832), Robert Louis Stevenson (1878), Harold Nicolson (1936) and so on.
In my copy, which was published in 2000 (and possibly in later editions, too), the diarist’s name is given at the end of each entry, making it something of a chore with a collection of this size (nearly 700 pages) to keep flipping ahead in order to establish the person’s identity. I found this mildly irritating as it was inclined to disrupt my concentration. Establishing authorship from the get-go would have been more practical.
If you are a keen reader of biographical works, there is every chance you will be familiar with the complete versions of some texts, but no matter, you can simply skip an entry, moving on to the next. Besides, re-reading a few choice extracts from old favourites can be fun.
The Editors of this anthology, Irene and Alan Taylor, say that, “all human life is here. But not every diarist.” Apparently, some individuals were excluded for being “dull” (George Gissing, for example) and others because their diaries weren’t dated (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, to name but one). Nevertheless, every extract has been thoughtfully selected for its wit and percipience.
I will emphasise once again that The Assassin's Cloak is probably best consumed in bite-sized chunks, but you may well prefer to bolt it down in one. Either way, you’ll find it filled with risqué anecdotes, humorous stories, unintended hilarity and intriguing revelations.
“I saw the most extraordinary tricycle pass today. A bath chair made of wicker work in which reclined a smart lady, and behind, where one should push, a gentleman treadling, puffing and blowing and looking very sheepish. I wonder any one will make such an exhibition of themselves. How the bicycles swarm now, and yet a few years since, every one turned round to stare at a velocipede!” -- Beatrix Potter (21st February 1885)You can read many more of my reviews and other literary features at Book Jotter >>
December 31, 2020
I've had this book on my shelf for ages: 696 hefty pages and a two-inch spine. I decided to read it in 2020 because I'm trying to read all the books on my shelves, especially the ones that have been there a long time. Because of the unusual structure (each day of the calendar year features multiple short excerpts from various diarists, entries from different centuries, decades, and years all cheek by jowl), it lent itself to being read over the course of a single year.
And we all know how 2020 went. This book lived on my bedside table the whole year. I tried to keep up to at least the current month, though I was most often behind the actual calendar date. Mostly British diarists are represented here, and there are many who wrote during WWII. It gave me some sense of perspective on a miserable plague year. There are even writers who survived the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Some of the writers are still living today. There's a helpful index of short biographies at the back, which I flipped to frequently and also updated with death dates for some writers (this book is from 2002).
I think most diaries are boring if you read them all the way through, so this collection of highlights was just right for me. A beautiful concept, and I wish there were other anthologies like this with an even greater variety of writers from all corners of the world. I'm glad to own this, and look forward to revisiting it in the future.
And we all know how 2020 went. This book lived on my bedside table the whole year. I tried to keep up to at least the current month, though I was most often behind the actual calendar date. Mostly British diarists are represented here, and there are many who wrote during WWII. It gave me some sense of perspective on a miserable plague year. There are even writers who survived the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Some of the writers are still living today. There's a helpful index of short biographies at the back, which I flipped to frequently and also updated with death dates for some writers (this book is from 2002).
I think most diaries are boring if you read them all the way through, so this collection of highlights was just right for me. A beautiful concept, and I wish there were other anthologies like this with an even greater variety of writers from all corners of the world. I'm glad to own this, and look forward to revisiting it in the future.
January 26, 2024
The book spans almost four hundred years of diary writing. But its editorial decisions are frustrating. A huge number of entries relate to the first and second world wars. Of course, these were major events, but they are only 2.5 % of the time period covered. Also, far too many inclusions relate to aristocratic interests or celebrities. Brian Eno is a great diary writer? I would have expected these entries to range over all classes and reflect human life. The best entry is not by Samuel Pepys but his wife: she is not at all pleased that her venerable husband pushes her for sex and threatens to take his "pintle" elsewhere. Her stance is a breath of fresh air amidst so much misogyny and a sudden window onto real life. And yes, what is life? The world outside mankind hardly exists in the book. Nature is restricted to a few bits by Thoreau and Hopkins. I started this book to fill in hours of insomnia. Half way through, I found it a cure for insomnia!
February 4, 2024
Excellent book. Lots of background info on famous people that wouldn't be known otherwise. Great book for writers and those interested in autobiography and biography.
December 13, 2009
a former roommate of mine bought this back in 2003 or 2004, & i borrowed it from her for months but never finished it. it's a monster of a book, over 700 pages long. it's excerpts from famous diaries throughout history, from john evelyn & samuel pepys in the late 17th century, up to brian eno & alec guinness writing in the 1990s. every day of the year is represented, with a sampling of excerpts written on said day.
i love diaries, i write diaries myself, & i like reading other people's diaries (with permission--like published diaries). so this book was a really fun treat for me. it was heartening to find so many famous diarists struggling with their diary habits, hating their diaries, getting down on themselves for not being more faithful to their own chronicles. it made me feel better about occasionally skipping days or weeks in my diaries.
but it took me forever to slog through the book (about two weeks--that's A LOT for me) because it has no narrative structure, no thread pulling me along & making me turn the page, aside from idle curiosity & the desire to finish reading. &, like other reviewers have pointed out, there was so much stuff in here about world war two. it didn't bother me all that much, because i can recognize & accept that living through world war two (& of course, not all the diarists in the book DID live through the war) had to be a trying experience, & if i'd been there, i probably would have written about it a lot. there are accounts from people who had been sent to concentration camps, soliders in POW camps, politicians trying to make decisions about the war, journalists reporting on the war, people who have been displaced from their homes because of the war, etc.
the folks who put the book together are scottish, as far as i can tell, & so there is an emphasis on european (mostly british isles) diarists, & oh so much about the royal family (including queen victoria's diaries). even some of the diaries that recounted life in the united states were written by visiting europeans marveling over how different (in good & bad ways) the united states was. so, as an american, that was another element of the book that was kind of tough for me. but i got over it. some of the diarists were really fascinating & i looked forward to their entries (such as william soutar's accounts of life as an invalid). others were absolutely insufferable (thoreau, i'm looking at you).
so glad i finally picked up a copy of this book for myself! it did not disappoint.
i love diaries, i write diaries myself, & i like reading other people's diaries (with permission--like published diaries). so this book was a really fun treat for me. it was heartening to find so many famous diarists struggling with their diary habits, hating their diaries, getting down on themselves for not being more faithful to their own chronicles. it made me feel better about occasionally skipping days or weeks in my diaries.
but it took me forever to slog through the book (about two weeks--that's A LOT for me) because it has no narrative structure, no thread pulling me along & making me turn the page, aside from idle curiosity & the desire to finish reading. &, like other reviewers have pointed out, there was so much stuff in here about world war two. it didn't bother me all that much, because i can recognize & accept that living through world war two (& of course, not all the diarists in the book DID live through the war) had to be a trying experience, & if i'd been there, i probably would have written about it a lot. there are accounts from people who had been sent to concentration camps, soliders in POW camps, politicians trying to make decisions about the war, journalists reporting on the war, people who have been displaced from their homes because of the war, etc.
the folks who put the book together are scottish, as far as i can tell, & so there is an emphasis on european (mostly british isles) diarists, & oh so much about the royal family (including queen victoria's diaries). even some of the diaries that recounted life in the united states were written by visiting europeans marveling over how different (in good & bad ways) the united states was. so, as an american, that was another element of the book that was kind of tough for me. but i got over it. some of the diarists were really fascinating & i looked forward to their entries (such as william soutar's accounts of life as an invalid). others were absolutely insufferable (thoreau, i'm looking at you).
so glad i finally picked up a copy of this book for myself! it did not disappoint.
Read
July 26, 2021Read this as a 2020 project. Always gave an interesting perspective to munch on in the morning.
I can’t imagine such a reading project to collect these letters!
Finished it early because traveling with this book is kind of a big deal: made of many pages.
I can’t imagine such a reading project to collect these letters!
Finished it early because traveling with this book is kind of a big deal: made of many pages.
Want to read
December 25, 201524 DEC 2015 - spied on Margaret's feed. Sounds interesting.
July 21, 2025
Everyone knows diaries are just... full of crap.— Bridget Jones
Great in theory — diverse diaries organised calendrically, so for any given day of the year you get a grab-bag from Pepys to Brian Eno — not so great in practice. The two drawbacks to the structure are 1) the individual narratives are completely atomised — so-and-so could be about to give birth to triplets on June 18, then the next thing we hear from her, she's arranging flowers on June 29, 10 years earlier and 2) the more obscure or less heavily-featured diarists are liable to fade from memory between appearances (especially if you read this, as you're surely meant to, at the rate of one day per day), necessitating repeated visits to the endpapers to remind yourself who exactly the fuck was, to pick a name at random, Dearman Birchall.
The selection is heavily biased towards British society figures and the second World War, but I suppose this is a reflection of the available material. As you'd expect, the entertainment value varies enormously. At one end of the spectrum you've got deadly bores like the Tolstoys and Henry Thoreau (who actually uses the word "perchance") and fatuous, gossipy showoffs like Kenneth Williams, Joe Orton, and Andy Warhol. There are people like Marie Bashkirtseff and William Soutar who offer interesting perspectives, but are unfortunately boring/irritating individuals (especially the unremittingly dour Soutar). Goebbels is one of the more interesting voices — candid and energetic and terrifying — and Florence Farmborough stands out as a talented writer working with great material, e.g. her account of trying to treat two soldiers grotesquely burnt in a wine cellar conflagration. Then you've got establishment diarists like Alan Clarke, Tony Benn and Chips Channon doing their thing — witty and entertaining enough, but always with the self-consciousness of diarists writing for publication. The best diaries are surely those in the lineage of Pepys — peepshows looking onto private worlds.
The inclusion of the fictional diaries of Adrian Mole and Elizabeth Pepys is just silly (and in the case of the latter, misleading, with many reviewers believing it to be authentic). Here are a few bits I got a kick out of:
⦁ Byron is, predictably, thirsty. In fact he has "so violent a thirst that I have drank as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water, in one night, after going to bed, and been still thirsty — calculating, however, some lost from the bursting out and effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water, in drawing the corks, or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience."
⦁ Anaïs Nin’s lovely day in the Bois de Boulogne.
⦁ Stendhal is thirsty: "I spent an hour with Mme. Tivollier, with whom I'm making great progess. I put my hand on her thigh without any objection on her part, I'd sleep with her with pleasure for a month."
⦁ H.L. Mencken agrees with me on the proper position for reading: "I not only read in bed every night; I also do nearly all my daylight reading lying down. I believe fully in the Chinese maxim that it is foolish to do anything standing up that can be done sitting, or anything sitting that can be done stretched out."
⦁ Bob Dylan’s awkward dinner at the Coppolas' circa 1975 (in the words of Eleanor Coppola): "He came with Marlon Brando and some people after Bill Graham's concert. Francis made a huge pot of spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and broccoli. I was in the kitchen getting things and everyone sat down at the table. Bob was hanging up his jacket or something. When he got to the dining room all the chairs were filled except one next to the children down at the end, so he sat down there, not near his wife or Marlon or Francis. He sat there looking real glum and about halfway through he got up and left."
⦁ Andy Warhol encounters an ex-President, June 5th, 1982:
I went into one of those Korean produce stores and there were about 15 people in there, it was mobbed, and I listened to this guy rave about a pineapple for ten minutes and by the time he was through, I was dying to get one, too.
He was saying, 'I want it ripe and ready! Juicy! Luscious! Ready to eat, right off the bat!' And then I turned around and it was Nixon. And one of his daughters was with him, but looking older — maybe Julie, I think. And he looked pudgy, like a Dickens character, fat with a belly. And they had him sign for the bill. There were secret service with him. And the girl at the cash register said he was 'Number One Charge'.
December 18, 2021
I liked the concept but not the execution. Far too many of the entries were British, war-based, and male.
August 19, 2017
A diary is an assassin’s cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen. – William Soutar
The Assassin’s Cloak è un’antologia di estratti di diari famosi, organizzati in modo cronologico. Molti tra gli autori scelti sono bianchi, maschi e inglesi, ma è una scelta piuttosto trasparente direi. Purtroppo la maggior parte mi è risultata sconosciuta, e quindi mi è stata molto utile la breve biografia in appendice. Alcuni molto interessanti: Louisa May Alcott, E.M. Delafield, Katherine Mansfield, Samuel Pepys (qui in Italia uno sconosciuto, ma in Inghilterra i suoi diari sono famosissimi), Beatrix Potter, Barbara Pym, la regina Vittoria, Virgina Woolf…
http://abrightshininglie.wordpress.co...
December 31, 2021
A collection of journal entries arranged chronologically by date so that every day of the year has a handful of entries covering various time periods.
The concept is a lovely way to end or begin the day, reading what happened that very same day during various time periods. My objection comes from the title description as the worlds greatest, as well as comments in the intro which indicate these entries are taken from a diverse population.
Journal writing, especially in previous centuries, was a luxury afforded those with leisure, education, & access to writing materials including paper that wouldnt be recycled for other purposes. The activity is self limiting. However these editors consider the greatest diarists to be mostly male, mostly English speaking & if not, then European. The women diarists were usually drawn from the arts, particularly literature, or were married to famous men. Few diary entries regarding sex were included but when they were, they mostly dealt with admiration or paying a prostitute or a womans virtuous longing. Homosexuality was alluded to by the male diarists but never by the female, not even by Virginia Woolfe who wrote openly about sex.
The most nagging aspect of the collection was the editors fascination with WWII. Hardly a date went by without a WWII entry & there were many dates that had upward of 2 WWII entries. No other period was so heavily represented.
With those limitations in mind, the collection presented many opportunities to witness the last written moments of certain figures. It introduced people to me Id never heard of before. It revealed how detestable many famous people were, ruining them forever to me. The entries before WWII often contained blandly stated prejudices & bigotry, near hatred for OTHERS. All in all, very informative.
I would, however, love to have a year long read of more females diarists from more varied walks of life, as well as more LGBTQ+, POC, disabled, & non-European/USA/English speaking diarists.
The concept is a lovely way to end or begin the day, reading what happened that very same day during various time periods. My objection comes from the title description as the worlds greatest, as well as comments in the intro which indicate these entries are taken from a diverse population.
Journal writing, especially in previous centuries, was a luxury afforded those with leisure, education, & access to writing materials including paper that wouldnt be recycled for other purposes. The activity is self limiting. However these editors consider the greatest diarists to be mostly male, mostly English speaking & if not, then European. The women diarists were usually drawn from the arts, particularly literature, or were married to famous men. Few diary entries regarding sex were included but when they were, they mostly dealt with admiration or paying a prostitute or a womans virtuous longing. Homosexuality was alluded to by the male diarists but never by the female, not even by Virginia Woolfe who wrote openly about sex.
The most nagging aspect of the collection was the editors fascination with WWII. Hardly a date went by without a WWII entry & there were many dates that had upward of 2 WWII entries. No other period was so heavily represented.
With those limitations in mind, the collection presented many opportunities to witness the last written moments of certain figures. It introduced people to me Id never heard of before. It revealed how detestable many famous people were, ruining them forever to me. The entries before WWII often contained blandly stated prejudices & bigotry, near hatred for OTHERS. All in all, very informative.
I would, however, love to have a year long read of more females diarists from more varied walks of life, as well as more LGBTQ+, POC, disabled, & non-European/USA/English speaking diarists.
November 16, 2023
This is a big book, so don't think you are going to sit down and read it from cover to cover. It is itself arranged like a diary with a group of diary extracts to every day of the year. So a logical plan would/could be to read what is set for the day you are in. But I am not logical, so I just keep it by my bed, pick it up from time to time and read till I've had enough. The chosen extracts come from men and women and from all ages, although I think John Evelyn and Pepys are about the earliest. The subjects vary from profound philosophical thoughts to simple "today we did this" affairs. The entries by politicians are often revealing as they record bits of chit chat with others of their ilk and show a very different side to politics than the one we usually get fed by the media. Most of the diarists are unknown to me, but there is a handy index of brief bios at the back of the book to put me straight, and from there I can, if I so wish, jump to Wikipedia and complete my education.
I think the editors deserve a pat on the back. How many diaries and journals did they plough through in making this selection ? The mind - my mind anyway - boggles !
I think the editors deserve a pat on the back. How many diaries and journals did they plough through in making this selection ? The mind - my mind anyway - boggles !
January 8, 2020
I don't know if I "finished this" but after 3 years of long runs of reading the days as they passed, I decided to give myself the credit, today, of having finished this.
This is one of my favorite books and probably belongs in any guest room.
An anthology of diaries, some repeated authors, some make an appearance and never return. Every day has 5-6 different entries. The dates are all over the place though all are in English and most of the entries are from England. The topics are heartbreak, mundane home matters, disease, war, worry, frivolity, sex--the stuff of life. You can't pick up a day and not find 1-2 entries that stick with you somehow.
I have no favorite entry but today's most amusing one was this:
1934. At Marks and Spencer's I bought a peach-coloured vest and trollies to match with insertions of lace. Disgraceful I know but I can't help choosing my underwear with a view to it being seen. - Barbara Pym
This is one of my favorite books and probably belongs in any guest room.
An anthology of diaries, some repeated authors, some make an appearance and never return. Every day has 5-6 different entries. The dates are all over the place though all are in English and most of the entries are from England. The topics are heartbreak, mundane home matters, disease, war, worry, frivolity, sex--the stuff of life. You can't pick up a day and not find 1-2 entries that stick with you somehow.
I have no favorite entry but today's most amusing one was this:
1934. At Marks and Spencer's I bought a peach-coloured vest and trollies to match with insertions of lace. Disgraceful I know but I can't help choosing my underwear with a view to it being seen. - Barbara Pym
March 25, 2021
This was a marvelous read. I love how the editors structured this book, selecting diary excerpts from different people and centuries for each day of a year, sometimes matching them uncannily well (like the day when a man from 18th century and a man from 20th century recorded their delights at swimming naked). The World War Two somewhat overwhelmed this collection, but I didn’t mind that so much. I did mind more that there was an excess of British politicians, and British and American journalists. I wanted more of the Russians, who were represented only by the Tolstoy couple and some artist, for example, and more of other nationalities and occupations. But these are picky remarks. Overall, this book was an ocean of delight and diversity, people writing about their sex lives and what they had for dinner, dropping names, worrying about finances, ruminating on the purpose of life and providing detailed historical records, with plenty of flair, wit and lyricism.
January 1, 2026
A selection of diary extracts from a range of sources as far back as Pepys compiled from 1st Jan to 31st Dec. I committed, and largely held, to reading it day-by-day for this entire year and enjoyed doing so. Some of the diarists are famous and others I'd never heard of and had to Google (and in doing so discovered some interesting people). The entries can strike any tone: happy, sad, funny, depressing, and often just mundane which still has value in a diary. As a keeper of a diary myself, I generally found the 5-10 minutes it would take to read the day's selections to be comforting -- a reminder of all the many lives that have been led and how they had their own moments of joy, melancholy, embarrassment, laughter, etc. It's been a constant routine during what has been a year of significant change for me.
January 24, 2019
Fabulous book. It begins on January 1. There are 3-4 entries (approx.) per date. The dates range from the 1600's to the 1990's. Some of the diarists are well known to us such as Samuel Pepys, Andy Warhol, Lord Mountbatten, Queen Victoria. Some I had not heard of, but soon wanted to know about them like James Lees-Milne. Many historic events are commented upon: the great London fire, World Wars 1 and 2 etc. The editors included a short biography of each diarist at the back, plus another list of entries by author in case one might just want to read all the entries by Beatrix Potter instead of going day by day.
It's the kind of book you can pick up, read a few entries, and put down again. A good book for a year challenge.
I loved it.
It's the kind of book you can pick up, read a few entries, and put down again. A good book for a year challenge.
I loved it.
December 31, 2017
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the Worlds's Greatest Diarists ed by Alan Taylor and Irene Taylor. - Good
This is an anthology of diary snippets written in date order, so I decided to read them day by day.
There is an interesting mix of diarists: Pepys, Housewife 49, Queen Victoria, Frances Stevenson (Lloyd George's secretary/mistress/wife), Barbara Castle, POW's, Actors, Actresses, Politicians - a range of eras, types of people and viewpoints. All give you a perspective into their times, some more interesting than others, but all a window into what people were thinking at that time.
Really enjoyable way to start or end my day (dependent on how busy I was).
This is an anthology of diary snippets written in date order, so I decided to read them day by day.
There is an interesting mix of diarists: Pepys, Housewife 49, Queen Victoria, Frances Stevenson (Lloyd George's secretary/mistress/wife), Barbara Castle, POW's, Actors, Actresses, Politicians - a range of eras, types of people and viewpoints. All give you a perspective into their times, some more interesting than others, but all a window into what people were thinking at that time.
Really enjoyable way to start or end my day (dependent on how busy I was).
July 25, 2018
As a serial diarists who never finishes her dairies, I really appreciated this anthology. It is such a fun read and perfect for skimming when you don't feel like committing to a book properly. It's been a goal of mine to better my relationship with words: to write in a more authentic style and to write without an audience in mind. Better yet, to write for myself as the audience, as academia has primed me to await critique for my words. This anthology reflects the efforts of my favorite writers to do the same: to overcome blockades and write freely for the love of writing.
July 11, 2019
This is a fabulous book! I really enjoyed reading the day's entries before bed. I'm afraid some nights I just couldn't put it down and had to read a few extra days. I met some wonderful people. I am happy that short bios of the writers is included in the back as well as a full bibliography. There are several diarists whose complete diaries I will want to track down. The index of diarists allowed me to search through for favorites. Very thoughtfully put together. I'm grateful that my terrific sister shared this great book with me. I highly recommend!
November 9, 2023
The rare 5 stars for me, which means I recommend it to readers and non-readers alike. I tried this book many ways — reading the entries on the day, keeping it as a coffee table book, til I ended up just powering through. I love the diary as a medium. I recommend owning this and getting through it however you see fit. I love journaling though so I’m definitely the target audience for this.
Lots of rare and well-collected entries. It is a bit of a slough so even if you don’t read cover to cover I think it’s worth exploring.
Lots of rare and well-collected entries. It is a bit of a slough so even if you don’t read cover to cover I think it’s worth exploring.
December 31, 2024
This has been a fun accompaniment to 2024, with a short array of diary entries for every day of the year. It includes the famous, the infamous and some, so-called, ordinary people. So there are those with well-known diaries, such as Pepys, Chips Channon and Kenneth Williams, extracts from Josef Goebbels diaries, plus literary figures, those who wrote war diaries, such as Nella Last, and many others.
I have really enjoyed this and recommend it to anyone who may wish for a short extract/extracts each day.
I have really enjoyed this and recommend it to anyone who may wish for a short extract/extracts each day.
December 5, 2025
Multiple diary entries for every day of the year from the great diarists of history, and many lesser talents - from Boswell and Pepys to Warhol and Robert Louis Stevenson, Delacroix and Darwin, Durrell and Anne Frank - a scale of human pettiness, pondering, pontificating and observation from the 1600s to modern times. Bursting with detail of life and viewpoint and melancholy. With literally thousands of entries, most no more than a few paragraphs, make this a perfect bathroom book. 4-1/2 stars.
May 25, 2020
I bought this almost ten years ago and started it but then left it aside. How wonderful to find it again last week and this time dive in, reading the 644 pages in six days when I should have been doing so many other things. Diaries are my favourite type of read and, so, this was sheer, unadulterated bliss. I have written out a list of the diaries I now want to get after sampling them in 'The Assassin's Cloak'. It is a long list. I better start saving!
January 1, 2022
Wonderful. A joyful read, notwithstanding some horrific pieces on war and loss. Some diary entries i have read before - i recall reading Robert Scott's Antarctic diaries almost 40 years ago and the excerpts here remain very moving. Alan Clark, very funny. The hallmark of a good book is often the wish to read more by the same author - hear there were lots, all carefully referenced. Samuel Pepys' 12 volume complete diary is surely making the reading list.
July 1, 2022
This is a great gift for people who don’t read long books, or academics. It has entries for each day of the year, diary entries from interesting people with a little bio section for those people. It is not meant to be read straight through, it lives in my side table and I pick it up now and again. Interesting perspectives, oddities, insights.
February 15, 2025
A ‘Little’ gem..though a lengthy read. Easy to dip in and out of and meet some interesting characters along the way..some famous, others not so nowadays. See how life has changed for us over the centuries, well worth the invested time and dent in your challenge goal!
July 11, 2025
You'd think I'd learn. Like all anthologies of this kind: great if it's someone you like or are interested in. Meh, if it's someone you are indifferent towards and unbelievably dull if it's someone you don't give a toss about. This was/is unbelievably dull.
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