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

With 170 contributors, a scope that is peerless, international and crosses centuries. “The Assassin’s Cloak” pays tribute to a fascinating genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all literary forms. There are several diary excerpts for every day of the year beginning with Samuel Pepys and along the way we meet cads and charmers, sailors and psychopaths, rock stars and prima ballerinas, gossips, drunks, snobs, lechers and lovers. There is humour and tragedy, history and the humdrum, often recoded on the same day or in the same entry.

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

* A substantial treasury to dip into for years and years, to inspire new thoughts and enlighten all dullness … it amply fills a gap in the classics of English-language anthologies. — Muriel Spark TLS * The result is a succession of surprises and delights, as all those solitary voices strike up a conversation across the years. The Times * Gossipy, funny, perceptive and vicious extract. Every dip-in is a sheer delight. — Kenneth Baker Observer * Brilliant … It's the perfect bedtime book. Evening Standard