The assassin's cloak2000
an anthology of the world's greatest diarists
by Irene Taylor
Excerpts from 170 diarists, arranged by month.
"A diary is an assassin's cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen, (William Soutar). This remarkable anthology includes entries from more than 170 diarists, and is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive ever compiled. Ten years in the making, The Assassin's Cloak pays tribute to a fascinating genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all literary forms. The scope of The Assassin's Cloak is peerless and international, and appropriately it begins with Samuel Pepys, the Shakespeare of all diarists. It reaches across the centuries with several diary excerpts for every day of the year and along the way we meet cads and charmers, sailors and psychopaths, rock stars and prima ballerinas, gossips, drunks, snobs,...