The Diary Review

Today is the centenary of the birth of Paul Bowles, author of The Sheltering Sky , and lover of Morocco where he lived most of his life. He ...

José Lezama Lima, one of Cuba’s most celebrated literary figures of the 20th century, was born one hundred years ago today. To mark the cent...

‘My faith, it it’s coquetry, I’m caught, if you can call it being caught to experience keen pleasure.’ This is the great womaniser and early...

Benjamin Constant, one of France’s most important Napoleon-era political thinkers, died 180 years ago today. He is mostly remembered today, ...

‘We were ushered into the dirtiest room I ever beheld, empty, and devoid of comfort. A few filthy lamps, stood on a sideboard - common chair...

‘I will be what I will be - and I am now what I am. Here is where I will devote my energy. My power is with me, not with tomorrow.’ So wrote...

‘This is the second day when I have been indolent and failed to carry out all that I had set myself. Why so? I do not know. However, I must ...

Eric Gill, one of the great British artist-craftsmen of the 20th century, died 70 years ago today. Much revered in his lifetime and afterwar...

The First World War diaries of Ernst Jünger, a German soldier who became a revered literary figure, have just been published for the first t...

‘They screamed and shouted, begging us not to kill them because they had family and kids back home. So what? As if, by contrast, we’d come f...

Tommy’s Peace , the second volume of diaries written by Thomas Cairns Livingstone, a Glasgow clerk in the first decades of the 20th century,...

It’s sixty years to the day since the death of the great Irish playwright and social commentator, George Bernard Shaw, often called just GBS...

King Chulalongkorn also known as Rama V, one of Thailand’s greatest rulers and reformers, died 100 years ago today. For much of his reign, a...