The Diary Review

Michel de Montaigne, the great 16th century French essayist and philosopher, was born 480 years ago today. His essays on any number of topic...

Eighty years ago today, the Reichstag building in Berlin, which had housed the German Diet since its opening in 1894, suffered a major arson...

Today marks the centenary of the birth of George Barker, one of the 20th century’s most Bohemian and charismatic of British poets. Though ch...

Thirty years ago today, half my life give or take a few months, I bought a four bedroom house, in Kilburn. Until then, I had been living in ...

Thomas Crosfield was buried three and a half centuries ago today. Born and bred in the Lake District, he became an Oxford university man for...

The British Library has acquired Sir Alec Guinness’s personal archive, including over 100 volumes of diaries. Guinness did publish two books...

Today is the centenary of the birth of Amrita Sher-Gil, one of the Indian’s most important 20th century painters with an international reput...

The legendary Gordon of Khartoum was born 180 years ago today. Though popular with the British public for his exploits in China and Sudan, h...

Hugh Gaitskell, sometimes dubbed the best Prime Minister the UK never had, died 50 years ago today. For about a decade, and long before it w...

Swami Vivekananda, an Indian monk credited with raising the profile of Hinduism on the world stage and introducing yoga to the West, was bor...

To complete a trilogy of articles in December about British antiquarians, today marks the 180th anniversary of the death of the long-lived W...

After yesterday’s William Cole anniversary, today is the 380th anniversary of the birth of another English antiquarian - Anthony Wood. Altho...