Want to know what women tell their diaries? Read this sizzling book
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On February 14 1998, the ballerina Deborah Bull wrote in her diary: “I rush down to the front door to check the post”. The results were disappointing. “No deluge of Valentine cards”, she noted, adding hopefully, “unless they had all gone to the Opera House”. Six years later, in 2004, Oona King MP spent Valentine’s Day in a rather different way: “I’m sitting on a runway in Saudi Arabia. I’m not supposed to be here. Bangladesh Airlines – Biman – took a wrong turn …”
Each page of Secret Voices – a new anthology of 1,200 entries from women’s diaries – is filled with such unexpected twists and turns. Arranged by calendar year, we pass through the seasons via snapshots of over 100 women’s lives, from more than 20 countries, spanning four centuries. This compilation is the creation of the journalist, author and broadcaster, Sarah Gristwood. With an array of biographies to her name (including of Beatrix Potter, Vita Sackville-West and Elizabeth II), Gristwood is well placed as an editor for this monumental subject.
Echoing the randomness of real life, it is a delightfully mixed bag. We learn of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s night-time battles with gnats: “witness my swelled finger – witness this eccentric writing. I will gnat sleep in that room again…” We feel the pain of Anne Lister’s visit from a leechwoman in 1823 (she put “12 leeches on my back”), or Barbara Pym buying a “utility brassiére” in 1943. Emma Thompson, we discover, faced all kinds of struggles filming Sense and Sensibility in 1995: “I keep tripping over my frock and swearing.”
Many entries are reassuringly mundane. In January 1848, the diarist Caroline Fox fell victim to indecision: “Such a beautiful day, that one felt quite confused how to make the most of it, and accordingly frittered it away.” Others, such as Louisa May Alcott, were more productive; in April 1887, the Little Women author recorded her days with military succinctness: “Fine. wrote letters. To town at 11. Shopping. Dress &c. Felt well. Oil bath. Slept well. Pay Miss J. Chop.”
Some entries offer personal insights into major historical events. On the day of the Armistice in 1918, London erupted in a “pandemonium of noise and revelry”. Yet Beatrice Webb sensed the start of something more: “How soon will the tide of revolution catch up the tide of victory?” the sociologist confided in writing, “Will it be six months or a year?” Two decades later, when the Germans invaded Poland on September 1 1939, similar unease was expressed by Virginia Woolf: “I don’t know why I write this, or what I feel, or shall feel. All is hovering over us.”
We dart between moments of dark and light, thrills and mundanity, wild joy and crippling grief. There are the final moments that Miles Franklin, an Australian writer, spent with her mother: “At 1.30 a.m. Mother knew me, at 3.30 she went into a coma & passed at 1.30 p.m.” We learn of Victoria Derbyshire’s inner turmoil when sharing her cancer diagnosis on Twitter: “I know I want to be open about cancer, so now is as good a time as any. Around 7.25 p.m., I post this.” In her diary, the broadcaster writes out her thread of Tweets in full. Then: “Within milliseconds messages begin to pour in…”
Anthologies are risky. Secret Voices is – in its simplest form – an extensive list of random quotes, in want of a gripping storyline. Yet it is totally addictive to peruse. Without exception, every entry sizzles, each one revealing some peculiar detail or fascinating insight, and together, forming a rich and vivid picture of the female experience.
It’s not a book to read straight, from start to finish, but a companion to return to as the year passes, to cherish in moments of solitude or sadness, for comfort or inspiration. What’s more, it is gorgeously presented. There is something almost liturgical in the dark green hardback, muted orange detailing, reading ribbon and cream pages with wide borders.
For Anne Frank, her motivation for diary writing was “to bring out all the kinds of things that lie buried in my heart”. It is these private, long-hidden musings which Gristwood has so cleverly unearthed, and which Secret Voices – this treasure of a book – so elegantly, strikingly captures.
Secret Voices is published by Batsford at £25. To order your copy for £19.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
