The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists

‘A diary is an assassin’s cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen’, wrote William Soutar in 1934. But a diary is also a place for recording everyday thoughts and special occasions, private fears and hopeful dreams. The Assassin’s Cloak gathers together some of the most entertaining and inspiring entries for each day of the year, as writers ranging from Queen Victoria to Andy Warhol, Samuel Pepys to Adrian Mole, pen their musings on the historic and the mundane.Spanning centuries and international in scope, this peerless anthology pays tribute to a genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all literary forms.This new updated edition is published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the book’s original publication.

Reviews of The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists

Like Shakespeare, the Bible and some of those other bedside titles, The Assassin's Cloak is not so much a book as a world * * Washington Post * * There are tremendous riches here. You are left with a kaleidoscope of images . . . There is profound despair, excitement, hope and a great deal of confession. The overall result is strangely uplifting * * Daily Telegraph * * The sublime and the ridiculous for once co-exist rather marvellously, letting us take insight from the mundane or the momentous, or simply from unique moments in time * * Observer * * So enthralling that one devours chunks at a time. One of the paperbacks of this year, or any year * * Herald * * A superb collection . . . Gossipy, funny, perceptive and vicious . . . Every dip-in is a sheer delight * * Observer * * This gloriously serendipitous gathering of diarists provides wonderfully diverse comments on virtually everything under the sun * * Sunday Telegraph * * For a delicious daily read, nothing can eclipse The Assassin's Cloak. This is the ultimate bedside book * * Daily Mail * * Wonderful . . . The range of diarists and subjects is remarkable, and the anthology is one to which you will want to return again and again * * Sunday Times * * Utterly compulsive, thanks, in part, to the excellent editing and the way in which they have allowed the commonplace to co-exist with the sage, the hackneyed with the gnostic. Its cumulative effect is surprisingly moving * * The Times * * Triumphantly eclectic and entertaining . . . What this delightful book demonstrates is that there is nothing more gripping than everyday life, and nothing more extraordinary than the commonplace * * Observer * *