The Diary Review

‘I consider this days very successful work which has put me on the knot of several new and interesting products which may have a wide applic...

Joshua Reynolds, one of the most important 18th century British painters and a founder of the Royal Academy of Arts, was born three centurie...

‘I decided that the Brussels years were likely to be a sharply isolated segment of my life, and that I might mark them by attempting this ne...

Emil Racoviţă, one of the most distinguished of Romanian scientists, was born 150 years ago today. Though he lived in France for much of his...

‘I have had a disappointment. I had hoped to buy 2 middle sized blankets, to have them dyed violet, to make a warm winter coat, but the pers...

Edith Cavell, a British war and nursing heroine, second only perhaps to Florence Nightingale, was executed 100 years ago today. She revoluti...

It is the bicentenary today of the famous Battle of Waterloo , Napoléon Bonaparte’s final defeat, which brought to an end over 20 years of w...

‘If in a hundred years we have not established contact with some other planet (but we will), or, next best, with the earth’s interior, human...

Happy birthday Chantal Akerman - 60 today. Having been much influenced from an early age by Jean-Luc Godard, she’s been a maker of films, of...

One hundred years ago today (19 August), the Belgian government finally approved the annexation of Congo Free State - the entire area of the...