Diaries

[Muddydoor]

I’ve really got into reading these. Sometimes the author planned on them being read, sometimes not. I have a huge interest in WW2 and love reading about how life was for people (mainly women) during those times.

Have you read the books collated by Mass Observation archivists?

I’ve read one, but my dream is to get down to the collection in Sussex to see the originals.

Nella Last's diary is condensed into three books, but the original is around 12 million words.

Ooh, there’s a challenge!

Virginia Woolf’s are wonderful. Also those of Frances Partridge.

The Victor Klemperer diaries are incredible. A Jew in Dresden who kept a diary throughout ww2. Absolutely spell binding

There was a great book published in the 1980s by Thomas Mallon A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries, it's a very comprehensive overview of published diaries - loads of inspiration for further reading of all sorts of diaries.

Different period, but the diaries of Samuel Pepys are engrossing. I've also dipped into the diaries of Alan Bennett, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh. Letters are really interesting too. I've read lots sent and received by the Mitford sisters.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Different period, but the diaries of Samuel Pepys are engrossing. I've also dipped into the diaries of Alan Bennett, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh. Letters are really interesting too. I've read lots sent and received by the Mitford sisters.

The Mitford sisters’ letters are hilarious — I was expecting to find them irritating, but I kept reading out bits to DH in bed.

I’ve got a book about living in a Victorian village by Mrs Mitford, who may be a relative. I really don’t think I could read something by the Mitford sisters.

Why not, @Muddydoor? You do know they weren't all Nazi sympathisers, I assume. Jessica was a tireless worker for workers' rights and civil rights in the US, and wrote several non-fiction books about her work and her early life, all of which are a good read. Nancy was a very good comic writer.

Tbh I mainly look for diaries from ‘ordinary people’

Wait - no one is mentioning Anne Frank?

I ran across a great one, also German, which was originally banned:

A Woman In Berlin
Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_in_Berlin

us.macmillan.com/books/9780312426118

Anne Frank all the way- great read.

I’ve got it but I’m a little afraid to read it

@Muddydoor

I’ve got it but I’m a little afraid to read it

What, afraid of reading Anne Frank’s diary? Why? It’s mostly adolescent analysis of living in confined spaces with your family who irritate you, even while you love them, and a bunch of strangers, and developing a probably temporary crush on the only male of your age, against a backdrop of war. I think what struck me when I read it in my teens was appalled sympathy for a teenage girl dealing with periods etc while sharing a tiny room with a middle-aged man and having to keep quiet all the time.

I highly recommend A Notable Woman by Jean Lucey Pratt. She is Maggie Joy Blunt of the mass observation books - pseudonym given by Simon Garfield

Also These Wonderful Rumours by May Smith. She was a young teacher.

And Betty's Wartime Diary. A theatrical seamstress and dresser who retired to Norfolk just before WWII. Lots of memories of living in the countryside at this time, poacher/black marketeer acquaintances etc.

@Muddydoor my suggestions above are very much ordinary people.

Oh and also Sand in My Shoes by Joan Rice who became a WAAF in WWII. It's very much concerned with her falling in love. She is an ordinary woman but later becomes Tim Rice's mother!!

Just found another one I wanted to suggest but couldn't remember the name:- Mr Brown's War - a Diary From the Home Front. An older man who was in the Home Guard.

For fictionalised versions of diaries set in WWII; based on real life experiences, there's also The Provincial Lady in Wartime by E.M Delafield and Mrs Tim Carries On by D.E Stevenson, both with lots of humour.

How about a life discarded by Alexander masters. The author found diaries in a skip and investigated them.

Diary of a nobody.

How about Maman, what are we called now?, the diary of a Jewish woman living in Paris under the Nazis.

And a completely different wartime diary, the enthralling, brave memoir: To War with Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly 1939–1945, by Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly.

Astrid Lindgren’s wartime diaries are well worth reading.
www.astridlindgren.com/en/book/war-diaries-1939-1945

Persephone Books has lots of titles that might interest you OP. persephonebooks.co.uk/collections/grey-books-wwii