Site,—You have already been more than kind in permitting me .
the use of your columns at various times. I venture, nevertheless, to beg another inch or two for a marginal comment on Harold Nicolson's brilliant essay on diaries. How right he is about the difficulty of keeping diaries and of keeping them up. How right that there is always a conflict between the privacy and the potential publicity of a diary, and that no really good diary "was ever conceived as a purely private diary." The diary-impulse is largely public.
Recognising these conflicts, Mass-Observation has since the start of the war had a scheme for private-public diarists, which has proved attractive to more and more people in all walks of life. These people keep their diaries and send them in to us every few weeks We suitably file the diaries, keeping them in our War Library safely down in the country, where they are valuable both for the diarist personally after the war, and for the social student. This gives a diary incentive and interest, bridges a private-public gap, and at the same time provides what will, I believe, be sociological material of interest and value in the years to come We would welcome the co-operation of any who feel interested in this way of making a small, candid contribution to
present interest and future understanding. As Harold Nicolson re- marks, "a good diary is the raw material ot history." We are ener- getically accumulating this taw material.—Yours sincerely,
Previous page
