David Wilson - Harold Nicolson - Enoch Powell - Oscar Wilde - Mae West - Karl Pilkington - Jo Brand - Tony Benn - Robert Falcon Scott - Anne Frank - Kurt Cobain - Jean-Paul Sartre - Days that Shook the World TV - Faulks on Fiction TV - Marilyn Monroe: The Missing Evidence TV - A N Wilson - George Orwell - The British: Dirty Money TV - Anne Frank Remembered 1995 - History’s Greatest Hoaxes TV - The Comic Strip Presents TV - Engrenages TV - Alan Bennett’s Diaries TV - History's Greatest Mysteries TV - Sex: A Bonkers History TV - Sex: A Bonkers History TV -
I found the [Knox’s prison] diary disquieting and worrying ... What was not present in the diary was any empathy, any sympathy, and understanding or insight about what the Kerchers might be experiencing. Professor David Wilson
To be a good diarist one must have a little snouty, sneaky mind. Harold Nicolson, re Samuel Pepys
To write a diary every day is like returning to one’s own vomit. Enoch Powell, interview Sunday Times 6th November 1977
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
I always say, keep a diary and some day it’ll keep you. Mae West, Every Day’s a Holiday, 1937
It’s not easy keeping a diary. You have to be pretty committed. Karl Pilkington
I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be. Jo Brand
The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It’s very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed. Tony Benn
The events of the day’s march are now becoming so dreary and dispiriting that one longs to forget them when we camp; it is an effort even to record them in a diary. Robert Falcon Scott
Everyone thinks I’m showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I’m silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I’m tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
It’s an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I – nor for that matter anyone else – will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. ibid.
Please read my diary, look through my things and figure me out. Kurt Cobain
That’s what I must avoid: I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the look-out, and you continually stretch the truth. Jean-Paul Sartre
April 1983 The Sunday Times London: Hugh Trevor-Roper is Britain’s most celebrated historian. Days that Shook the World s1e2: Diaries of Adolf Hitler, BBC 2003
The newspaper’s presses downstairs will be printing the biggest scoop the paper has ever had: the publication of the diaries of Adolf Hitler written across the whole period of the Fuhrer’s reign. ibid.
Trevor-Roper is the leading authority on Hitler and the Third Reich. ibid.
The new owner of Times Newspapers Rupert Murdoch entered a bidding war to buy the rights to the diaries. ibid.
Nazi memorabilia ... the number of forgeries is vast and uncontrolled. ibid.
No surviving Nazi had ever mentioned Hitler keeping a diary. ibid.
He [Trevor-Roper] decides to make a clean break and tell the world his fears. ibid.
The paper in the diaries was laced with a chemical whitener that had not existed before 1955 ... The ink was not more than twelve months old. ibid.
When the novel was invented life seemed more straightforward. There were those who owned the land and those who worked it. And both groups knew where they stood. But when people started to move from place to place they also began to move up and down in the world. This brought friction and misunderstanding. Sometimes just in the words you used. If language didn’t give you away, your taste would. We all think we know what a snob looks like. They think they are the bees’ knees. And never understand that in fact the joke’s on them. In books though it’s quite a different matter. Far from being odious a snob as a novel can be surprisingly good value, and offer not just laughs, they also provide a shortcut into larger themes about who we are and where we fit in. In fact for the novelist the snob is a secret weapon. Some of the greatest novels ever written have a snob at their heart. Faulks on Fiction: The Snob, BBC 2011
In 1861 for the first time Charles Dickens showed the creation of a snob ... Great Expectations. ibid.
Diary of a Nobody by Gordon & Weedon Grossmith was published in 1892 and records the daily battles against Life’s minor injustices of a Mr Charles Pooter. ibid.
She and her diary were a very real danger to the Kennedys. Marilyn Monroe: The Missing Evidence, Channel 5 2014
She was one of the nineteenth century’s most prolific diarists. A N Wilson, Queen Victoria’s Letters, BBC 2014
For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. George Orwell, 1984
Samuel Pepys has lived in London his entire life. His diary documents the fear of half a million Londoners. The British IV: Dirty Money, Sky Atlantic 2012
She is perhaps Hitler’s best-known victim. Her book has sold more than twenty-five million copies and has been translated into at least fifty-five languages. She has become a symbol of the ten million souls murdered by the Nazis, Jews and non-Jews and in particular the one and a half million innocent children. She was just fifteen when she died, a miserable and lonely death in a concentration camp in Germany yet she is remembered for her faith in humanity. Anne Frank Remembered, 1995
The landlord of their apartment turned out to be a Nazi party member and in March 1931 they moved. The bank owned by the family also had serious problems resulting in its complete collapse in the Spring of 1933. ibid.
In those years before the war Holland was generally good to its Jewish refugees from Germany. ibid.
At first they conducted a hearts and minds campaign to win over the Dutch, their Aryan brothers. ibid.
From the beginning Anna addressed her diary as a special friend. ibid.
For almost a year he [Otto] had been secretly preparing a hiding place for them all … in several rooms behind the company offices. ibid.
Her increasing problems with her mother … ‘She’s not a mother to me …’ ibid.
Any one of them could have called the authorities at any time to collect the reward for betraying the Jews in hiding. ibid.
Their world collapsed … The authorities had been tipped off by an anonymous phone call. ibid.
It was one of the great discoveries of the last century. Sixty-two volumes of the hand-written personal diaries of one the most infamous and reviled men in modern history: Adolf Hitler. History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e3: Hitler’s Diaries, History 2016
Rupert Murdoch paid a cool $500,000 for the rights to publish them in The Sunday Times. ibid.
Having already put in place a deal to buy the Hitler diaries [Magnus] Linklater was tasked with trying to authenticate their contents and validate Murdoch’s proposed purchase. (Hoax & Nazis: Hitler & Diary & Fake & Forgery) ibid.
The Sunday Times was still not completely sure that the diaries weren’t fakes so they asked revered Cambridge historian Hugh Trevor-Roper … [who] started to have serious doubts. ibid.
I’ve been moved to this mental hospital … but they let me keep my camera which is good isn’t it ’cause it means I can keep on with my diary. The Comic Strip Presents s5e4: Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase, Channel 4 1993
Did you know he [judge] has a diary? Elina’s diary. He intends to use it. It’s dangerous for me, for everyone. He quoted a few names: it’s deadly. Engrenages/Spiral s1e2, Benoit, BBC 2006