'I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train' wrote Oscar Wilde, in the Importance of Being Ernest. In this episode Kate is joined by critic, editor and podcaster Lucy Scholes and regular pod guest Phil Chaffee to explore the intimate world of diaries. Can immersing ourselves in the details of other people's lives offer us valuable insight into how to fully appreciate the passing moments of our own? From gossipy self-mythologising Samuel Pepys right up to the present with the experimentation of Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries, and the beauty and hard-won insight of Helen Garner's Baillie Gifford prize-winning diaries. Also not to be missed, living it up Vanity Fair style through the glitz and glamour of 80s New York, with Tina Brown.

And if you enjoy this conversation don't miss Part II, over on the Patreon, where we swap notes on our favourite fictional diaries, consider the diaries we'd love to read if they had only been published and share some thoughts on our own diary keeping. You'll find that episode plus lots of benefits including ad-free listening, extra episodes, our community of readers and the pod book club over at patreon.com/thebookclubreview.

And to take advantage of that Serious Readers offer of £150 off any HD light head to serious readers.com/bcr and use the code BCR at checkout.

Book list

The Private Life of the Diary by Sally Bayley

The Paris Review

They by Kay Dick

Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke

Love Life of a Cheltenham Lady by Dinah Brooke

Part of the Story by Margaret Busby

Woman Alive by Susan Ertz

Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld

Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista

Look Closer by Robert Douglas Fairhurst

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham (ed)

The Diaries of Virginia Woolf

How To End a Story by Helen Garner

Henry Chips Channon: The Diaries

The James Lees Milne diaries

Writing Home by Alan Bennett

There and Back: 1999–2009 by Michael Palin

The Vanity Fair Diaries 1983–1992 by Tina Brown

End of a Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer

War in Val D'Orcia by Iris Origo

Russian Journal by Andrea Lee

Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance by Felix Platter

Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati

Modern Nature by Derek Jarman

Pharmacopeia by Derek Jarman

Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter

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