A diary is a rare thing: an unfiltered space where a person can meet themselves without judgement, without audience, and (for most, at least) without performance. In an age of constant sharing and curated lives, the diary remains stubbornly private, gloriously unedited. It offers us something we rarely find elsewhere: truth, in all its flawed […]

Exactly 80 years ago today, the world held its breath as the Allied forces launched the largest seaborne invasion in history, marking the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany’s occupation of Europe. Among the thousands of brave soldiers who set out to liberate the continent was Captain Alastair Bannerman, a devoted husband and father […]

Elsa Binder was twenty when, in October of 1941, German forces carried out a brutal massacre of thousands of Jews in her hometown of Stanislawów, Poland. Two months later, she and her family were compelled to enter the Stanisławów Ghetto, joining 20,000 others in a harrowing fight for survival. It was in this time of […]

Charles Baudelaire, born in Paris in 1821, is best known for Fleurs du Mal, a thrilling and controversial poetry collection that led to him being prosecuted when published in 1857. Sadly, his life was riddled with personal and financial struggles, and when he wrote this entry in his journal, Baudelaire’s health, both mental and physical, […]

Born in Belgium in 1912 and raised in the United States, May Sarton was a writer who mastered various literary forms during her career, from evocative poetry and compelling novels through to a number of deeply introspective journals in her later decades. One of her greatest is Journal of a Solitude, kept over the course […]