Any secret diaries out there?

[andrewalston]

Some people watching "Gentleman Jack" currently being shown on Sunday evenings on BBC1 might be surprised to find that the storyline is based closely on the diaries of the real Anne Lister, who actually lived in the first half of the 19th century at Shibden Hall, which for 85 years has been run as a museum.

The diaries, though, were substantially in code, and were hidden from view. When the main parts were decoded in the 1930s, their shocking nature prompted a friend of the Lister family to suggest that they be destroyed. This advice was, thankfully, not taken.

Has anyone discovered diaries written by a deceased family member and obviously intended to be kept secret? If so, what did you do with them?

[CarolA3]

It's a secret.  I'd have to shoot you.

Carol

[dowdstree]

Unfortunately no secret diaries found 

We have enjoyed watching Gentleman Jack and look forward to the next series.

Dorrie

[groom]

My aunt who died a few years ago aged 96, kept a diary from the time she was 21. She made my cousins promise to destroy them when she died. As they are both interested in family history, they decided they couldn't do this without reading them first.

What a disappointment, instead of lots of dark family secrets, they just consisted of entries such as, “doctor’s appointment 9.30” and “Had beef stew for dinner” Even for my cousin’s birth it just said, “ V...... born today.”   

[louisa maud]

My mother was born 1910, she kept a diary from the age of 15, she did say I could read them but I wish I had read them whist she was alive, she died aged 86, so many questions unanswered, although with my FT she helped fill in  gaps, she didn't write  a diary for a few years as she must have been unhappy, all due to housing conditions, I have them now and have read them  twice now and will read them again, what my daughter will do with them I really don't know, I have also kept a diary since about the age of 18, few bits missing as well for no real reason, just laziness on my part

Louisa Maud

[IgorStrav]

My father kept a diary, and I have a number of volumes of it, but have not read them all - it makes me sad.  No excuse, I will do it eventually.

And my great grandfather, who was a Metropolitan policeman, kept a notebook (rather than a diary) and wrote all sorts of interesting things in it, including when he was on duty at the funeral of Queen Victoria, when he went on holiday (staying with various members of the family) and - gold dust - dates of birth and places of birth for his family and details he can remember about them.

Yes, I know how lucky I am.   

[ThrelfallYorky]

I seem to have come from a long and unbroken line of non-diarists on both sides. Ten years ago I decided to start keeping a diary, fairly brief entries, I assumed, using an academic year diary I was only partway through. As time progressed, I found my writing becoming tinier and tinier.....
But the diary entries remain most mundane.

[philipsearching]

My grandfather (who lived in SW London) started keeping a diary in 1939 on loose papers.  Some sections are missing (or not written?) but when it was passed to me I thought it would be a goldmine of his thoughts during difficult times.

Well, I was wrong!  Plenty of gripes about his dislike of his job as an insurance agent, Union colleagues, and his brother-in-law.  Very few mentions of his wife and daughter.  Plenty of thoughts about books and radio programmes.  Only two significant mentions of the war: 1) a near-miss when a stick of bombs hit local houses (the nearest were next-door-but one, the house backing onto his back garden, and a house just across the road!) and brought his roof down; 2) "received my call-up papers today".

In the words of my youthful relatives: "WTF, Gramps?" - Now I'll have to shell out £30-odd to get his service record!

Philip

[Greensleeves]

I have my father's diary which he started in 1935 when he joined the RAF, and continued to write - intermittently - whilst he was in the Western Desert in 1939 to 1941.  The diary is written in Esperanto although there are some lists at the back in English, which included flying hours, letters sent and received, money sent back home to his parents.  One piece here sounds quite innocuous until you realise the place of the events in history, and the fact that Rommel was advancing.  He gives a date and then writes "Advanced to ...".  Three days later there is an entry "Retreated to ...." and then shortly thereafter "Retired to Cairo".