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The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists by Irene Taylor, Alan Taylor
kathleenitpdx's review
3.0
I have never had the discipline to keep a diary or journal for more than a few weeks at a time, so, instead, I am reading these edited and more interesting diary entries a few days at a time this year.
Finally finished...took two years. Not a book to travel with...the edition I have is quite bulky, so got behind when I did some traveling and took the book up again the next year. The book contains many interesting diary entries from the famous, infamous and unknown. There is something very immediate about the writing---historians writting later cannot forget the fact that the Germans did not invade Great Britain but the English writing at the time express the real fear of the possibility and some Germans anticipate a successful invasion.
The book is formatted by presenting the entries by day of the year, for example the entries for April 5th from 1664, 1790 and 1919 come together. I am not sure that I like that but it might also get boring at times to have a lot of entries from one diaryist come one after the other. The editors also point out in their introduction that it also meant that they could only select entries that were self contained,so, for instance they only have one entry from Anne Frank's diary. But I would love having a chronological presentation of WWII diaries. There are so many fascinating diaries from that time here--Mussolini's son in law, Goebbels, a British POW, a civilian in occupied Manx, civilians in England, etc. I think it would be fascinating to see their thoughts at similar points before the war, during the war and in its aftermath. And there must be some more diaries from the Pacific front than show up here.
This book started as a column in a British newspaper and is quite English centric so I found more entries on the Royals, BBC and British politics than I was really interested in.
Finally finished...took two years. Not a book to travel with...the edition I have is quite bulky, so got behind when I did some traveling and took the book up again the next year. The book contains many interesting diary entries from the famous, infamous and unknown. There is something very immediate about the writing---historians writting later cannot forget the fact that the Germans did not invade Great Britain but the English writing at the time express the real fear of the possibility and some Germans anticipate a successful invasion.
The book is formatted by presenting the entries by day of the year, for example the entries for April 5th from 1664, 1790 and 1919 come together. I am not sure that I like that but it might also get boring at times to have a lot of entries from one diaryist come one after the other. The editors also point out in their introduction that it also meant that they could only select entries that were self contained,so, for instance they only have one entry from Anne Frank's diary. But I would love having a chronological presentation of WWII diaries. There are so many fascinating diaries from that time here--Mussolini's son in law, Goebbels, a British POW, a civilian in occupied Manx, civilians in England, etc. I think it would be fascinating to see their thoughts at similar points before the war, during the war and in its aftermath. And there must be some more diaries from the Pacific front than show up here.
This book started as a column in a British newspaper and is quite English centric so I found more entries on the Royals, BBC and British politics than I was really interested in.
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