Diary stories

By chance on Saturday morning, I tuned into Radio 4 and heard Professor Clare Brant talking on Saturday Live about Dear Diary, a new exhibition at Somerset House in London that celebrates the art of writing a daily journal. It caught my ear because diaries are such a crucial tool for the biographer yet whenever I’ve attempted to write my own it’s always turned out dreadfully narcissistic and infinitely boring. What, asked Richard Coles, makes diaries so fascinating? It’s all in the detail, said Brant. The way reading a diary can take us into another person’s world, not the outward gloss and grandeur but right inside the way the diarist is thinking and responding to what’s happening around them. What makes them so compelling is not so much the presence of the diarist at big events, but those moments of unguarded comment or reflection. At the exhibition you can read the thoughts of an 18th-century tin miner in Cornwall who likes to eat dolphin for breakfast.