The Diary Review

‘This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with t...

‘By golly, what a day! It is seldom that days which one has anticipated in imagination for weeks or months ever measure up to one’s expectat...

‘He explained his call to my astonishment that Beadle, Tatum, and I were to be the co-recipients of the Nobel prize in medicine this year. I...

‘My heart was beating like some young student’s before the big exam. Was I going to be able to step out onto this land that I have been stri...

Malcolm X, one of the US’s most influential black activists, was assassinated 60 years ago today. He was not yet 40. Having come from a depr...

‘Perversion interests me most and is really my guiding darkness . . . I love to write of cruel deeds.’ This is Patricia Highsmith, who died ...

‘I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’ This is Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and ...

James Gordon Farrell, who might have reached ninety today had he not died young in a storm accident, would have become one of the really gre...

‘The air is distinctly fragrant with balsam and resin and mint - every breath of it a gift we may well thank God for. Who could ever guess t...