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

The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists (Paperback)

by Alan Taylor (Editor), Irene Taylor (Editor)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
Price: £14.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Paperback: 704 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd; New edition edition (27 Sep 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1841951722
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841951720
  • Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.6 x 6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 164,442 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

"I always say, keep a diary and someday it'll keep you", quipped Mae West, an insight that is wonderfully borne out in Irene and Alan Taylor's The Assassin's Cloak, an anthology of the world's greatest diarists. All of life can be found in this extraordinary compilation of diary entries by 170 of history's most famous (and infamous) diarists, beginning with "the Shakespeare of diarists", Samuel Pepys, and ending with the likes of the more notorious recent diarists, Roy Strong and Alan Clarke. The editors have cleverly arranged the book like a diary--there are entries for every day of the year, leading to fascinating juxtapositions, such as the thoughts of Leo Tolstoy, Queen Victoria and Josef Goebbels on three very different days in April. The selections are wonderfully judged, as they move from the momentous and the revealing--Noel Coward admitting "Gandhi has been assassinated. In my humble opinion, a bloody good thing but far too late"--to the banal and the downright bizarre--Wilhelm Reich claiming "I yearn for a beautiful woman with no sexual anxieties who will just take me! Have inhaled too much orgone radiation". Prepare to be shocked by the comments of those famous diarists you know, and intrigued by those you have never heard of (helpfully covered by short biographies at the end of the book), but more than anything be captivated by the sheer lust for life in all its detail reflected in a book that is clearly a long and arduous labour of love on the part of its authors. The sheer wealth of fascinating material in The Assassin's Cloak is overwhelming, and should be sampled day by day--rather like a diary. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Product Description

This is an anthology of some of the world's greatest diarists, with over 200 wide-ranging, international contributions. It is laid out day-by-day and a typical date might feature entries from such distinctly different writers as Andy Warhol, Kafka, Pepys and Goebbels.

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The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists 4.0 out of 5 stars (4)
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A book to treasure, 23 Dec 2000
This book is a wonderful and quite novel idea. Instead of being split up into themes and categories, this collection reads like a normal diary (ie. January 1st to December 31st). It features famous diary writers like Samuel Pepys, Andy Warhol and Victor Klemperer but also introduced me to some people I'd not heard of before. What impressed me about this collection was the small details, the everyday things that many diary keepers consider too mundane to note, but it is in these details that we find real life. This is a book to read and re-read every now and again. Truly a book to treasure.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A daily treat, 12 Feb 2007
By Four Violets (Hertford UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
Of the around 170 diarists quoted in this anthology, one, James Lee-Milne, writes "If a man has no constant lover who shares his soul as well as his body he must have a diary - a poor substitute but better than nothing". Whatever compelled these people, rich or poor, famous or obscure, to jot down their thoughts and feelings, and record the events that made up their daily existence, we are given a glimpse here of their own, very different lives. As well as between five and ten daily extracts from diarists, there are brief biographies which I found very useful for placing the diary into a context. I have already marked a few I would like to follow up and read more of - surprisingly Byron being one, and one more obscure, William Souter who was bedridden and paralysed from 1930 onwards. He wistfully records watching the servant women outside hanging up the washing,and wondering if anyone would want to marry him. I also liked the fact I could cheat by looking up all the dates for one particular diarist and reading them all ahead...I am trying to strictly ration myself to only read the date I am actually on, but find it very hard not to get ahead of myself.

There is a giddy kaleidoscope of human life from tragedy, financial ruin, philosophical musings, guilty regrets, political observations, the worlds of religion, art, music, literature, to POW camps and concentration camps.

On the 7th February 1856 Tolstoy "quarrelled with Turgenev, and had a wench at my place". On the 31st January 1987 it is recorded that Enoch Powell was asked by his hairdresser how he would like his hair cut - "in silence" was the terse reply. Chips Channon, on 10th January 1946, remarks to Emerald Cunard at a wedding how life has returned to normal, pointing to the crowd and observing "after all, this is what we have been fighting for." "What,", replied she, "are they all Poles?"

I feel that I am going to have to read the whole book through again next year as there is too much distilled living here to absorb in one sitting.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Standard of diary keeping isn't what it used to be!, 17 Jan 2003
By Myrtle "featherandquill" (Scotland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
Peeking into strangers front rooms to see how they live is nothing compared to the illicit pleasure of the thought of opening their diaries. I read the excerpts in their daily portions initially with relish, but surprisingly, by September my interest was waning. Perhaps the access was too legitimate, but I just found a great many of the entries perplexing without context (there are tiny biographies included) or downright boring. I began to get diary fatigue and ended up with a complete lack of interest in other people's lives! Which is a shame because some of the entries are genuinely illuminating.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Carpe Deum
I suppose most books were written by dead people. But whether they are fiction or non-fiction, most books are detached from the author's present - time is displaced into the... Read more
Published on 22 Jul 2007 by Mr. S. J. Wade

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