Between the Lines: The Art of the Diary • Episode #183

'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 See Privacy Policy at and California Privacy Notice at .

You can listen to Between the Lines: The Art of the Diary • Episode #183 online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Between the Lines: The Art of the Diary • Episode #183 is an episode from The Book Club Review by W!ZARD Studios.

This episode is 01:10:51 long.

This episode was published on Dec 9, 2025.

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