The Diary Review

Jonathan Swift, that great Anglo-Irish satirist, man of pamphlets, died 280 years ago. His name is best remembered for Gulliver’s Travels , ...

Today marks 250 years since the birth of Bernhard Henrik Crusell, the Finnish-Swedish clarinettist and composer whose travel journals and au...

Adam Tas is remembered today not only as a key figure in early Cape Colony history but also as the author of what is often considered South ...

‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex, although I am surrounded...

William Derham, an English clergyman and natural philosopher, died 230 years ago today. He was best known for his works on natural theology ...

‘If as a diarist he is often clumsy by being over-sincere, as a student he devotes too much effort to transcribing his sources and too littl...

‘To the Eastward & the Westward the Ice breaks up but soon freezes again. The Eskmeaux saw large Canoes full of White Men to the Westwar...

‘At the Royal Society. Mr. Collison showed me a Druid bead of glass, enameled, found at Henbury, near Macclesfield. Henbury is the old grave...

‘His Excellency’s brother was, accompanied by some gentlemen, to visit the Baile of Venice, whom he found very badly housed at the foot of a...