The Diary Review

‘I write because I cannot stop writing; it is the last habit that still feels like freedom. If these pages survive me, let them tell only th...

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law [. . .] I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all hi...

‘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 ...

‘I am 44 today and I have a distinct feeling I have reached halfway exactly. So far in my adult years I have lived by temperament and a bell...

‘For a fortnight JH and I have been trimming the fat from this volume, fat being the truth that endangers. The book still seems bloated, for...

‘Only you, my diary, know that it is here I show my fears, weaknesses, my complaints, my disillusions. I feel I cannot be weak outside becau...

Joe Orton could have been celebrating his 90th birthday today had he not been murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, in 1967! For a brief...