Showing titles in Diaries & Journals

Forty-five episodes from Series 1-8 of the Sony Award-winning BBC Radio comedy show, hosted by Rufus Hound. In this hilarious and revealing show, host Rufus Hound invites his guests to revisit their formative years by dusting off their intimate teenage diaries and reading them out in public for the very first time.

In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis.

The terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records, let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary grippingly documents Britain's drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact....

Alan Rickman remains one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre, from his breakout role as Die Hard's villainous Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. But Rickman's artistry wasn't confined to just his performances. Fans of memoirs at large will delight in the intimate experience of Rickman detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is 'anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid'.

In 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott went back to the huge frozen wasteland of the Antarctic with the intention of reaching the South Pole, by a long and terribly arduous trek across the ice. On finally reaching the pole, Scott and his comrades were devastated to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen. With temperatures of minus 30, they began their slow journey back to their base.

A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s. Shirer’s Berlin Diary, which is considered the first full record of what was happening in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, appeared in 1941. Shirer returned to the European front in 1944 to cover the end of the war. End of a Berlin Diary chronicles this year-long study of Germany after Hitler.

Joan Collins has been a diarist from the age of 12, writing enthusiastically over the years. She dictated most of these entries in real time into a mini-tape recorder at the end of the day, and now she is spilling the beans - well, nearly all of them. What you will discover was written when Joan 'felt like it' between 1989 and 2009. Whether it is an encounter with a superstar or a member of the royal family, or her keen and honest insights into other celebrities at dinner parties and events, Joan is honest and unapologetic.

Editor in chief Alexandra Shulman kept a diary of British Vogue's centenary year. And what a year. She reveals the emotional and logistical minefield of producing the 100th anniversary issue (that Duchess of Cambridge cover surprise), organising the star-studded Vogue 100 Gala and working with designers from Victoria Beckham to Karl Lagerfeld and contributors from David Bailey to Alexa Chung, all under the continual scrutiny of a television documentary crew.

After her mother, Brenda, passed away and her father sold the family home, broadcaster and writer Emma Kennedy found herself floundering, unable to make peace with the complex, charismatic woman who had been her mum. And then they found the letters. This heartbreakingly funny book about the impact of discovering lost letters is a celebration of correspondence; those lost acts of penned love, the vivid snapshots in time scattered back through a life.

Patricia Highsmith's first novel was picked up by Hitchcock and was a world-wide success. Her second novel was meant to tell everything about her true inside and dare what no-one had dared to write before: a lesbian love-story with a happy ending. But when she eventually relented to publish it under a pseudonym, it was a decision that would shape her life more than she could have guessed at the time. Henceforth she would vent her inner life either encoded in her future novels or—unbeknownst to most—in the 18 diaries and 38 notebooks she kept throughout her life.

Nostalgic, witty and filled with characters and situations that people of all ages will recognise, Dear Lupin is the entire correspondence of a Father to his only son, spanning nearly 25 years. Roger Mortimer's sometimes hilarious, sometimes touching, always generous letters to his son are packed with anecdotes and sharp observations, with a unique analogy for each and every scrape Charlie Mortimer got himself into.

What is it like to be a wife of a politician in modern-day Britain? Sasha Swire finally lifts the lid. For more than two decades she has kept a secret diary detailing the trials and tribulations of being a political plus-one; the travel, the security, the challenges to family life and the unpredictable events. A professional partner as well as a life partner and one with strong political opinions herself, she detonates the image of the dutiful stereotype.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness. In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray, others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life.

Discover the extraordinary diaries of the real Anne Lister. When this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told.

Named by Time as America's Favourite Humorist, the uniquely perceptive and hilarious David Sedaris reads from his essays and diaries for his ninth series for Radio 4. This is the complete recording of Meet David Sedaris Series Nine, which was broadcast on Radio 4.

When the Call the Midwife series became best sellers Jennifer Worth received mountains of letters - not only praising her books, but also from people who remembered the world her books described; life in the East End of London during the late 1940s and early '50s. Often her books touched her audience and they felt moved to write, or they wanted to share their own memories.A prolific letter writer herself, Jennifer always corresponded and this book includes some fascinating letters she received.

Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife, Friedel, whom he had met and married at the Westerbork labour camp in the Netherlands. At Auschwitz, they made it through the brutal selection process and were put to work. Each day, each hour became a battle for survival. For Eddy, this meant negotiating with the volatile guards in the medical barracks. For Friedel, it meant avoiding the Nazis’ barbaric medical experiments.

Published in their entirety, Sylvia Plath's journals provide an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life some of the most extraordinary poems of the 20th century. Faithfully transcribed from the 23 journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath includes two journals that Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, unsealed just before his death in 1998.

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky.