But constant sharing is a different beast altogether. For one thing, it’s public, which means presenting a carefully managed version of ourselves. Meanwhile, ‘journalling’ has, ironically via social media, gained traction among the TikTok generation – and yet this can feel like a somewhat performative version of diary-keeping (or indeed yet another productivity tool), usually with its own Insta post involving a carefully positioned pen, pretty notebook and a matcha latte just in shot.
What we’re talking about is traditional scribbled daily outpourings – and, if 2026’s literary offerings are anything to go by, the dial may be shifting.
Up soon is this happy trio: an Adrian Mole adaptation by the always brilliant David Nicholls; Alan Bennett’s much-anticipated new volumes; and Jess Robinson’s moving double-portrait of her grandmother’s and her own journals. It seems we are suddenly fascinated once again by what people write when they think no one is watching.
David Nicholls Adapts Adrian Mole
Few books captured the private voice of adolescence like Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. Funny, mortifying, tender and deeply human, its adaptation calls for a brilliant, witty and sensitive hand. Step forward then David Nicholls, who we feel as certain as we can be of anything will do a sterling job of penning the ten-part series for the BBC. In his own words, ‘I honestly don't think I'd have been a writer without this book, which I've drawn on endlessly ('Starter for Ten' is practically a tribute album) and it's our intention to do justice to Sue's unique and brilliant work.’ It’s hard to imagine a better custodian for Adrian’s painfully honest inner life.
Life Is Rosi: Grandma, Me and Our Diaries at 23
Jess Robinson’s Life Is Rosi: Grandma, Me and Our Diaries at 23 places her grandmother’s diary – written as a young woman in Nazi Germany, recording deportation, fear, and romance – alongside her own, which was written at the same age. One young woman documents survival, while the other charts the struggles of trying to get a fledgling career in showbiz off the ground. And yet, read alongside one another, their unguarded words yoke together a shared humanity via two true accounts of what it is to be young, uncertain, and alive. Miriam Margolyes says of it, ‘This is a unique juxtaposition of the shatteringly honest diaries of two Jewish girls fighting to survive – Grandma Rosi in the Holocaust and two generations later Jess in today's grubby showbiz world. It appalled, uplifted and delighted me. I wish I’d written it.'
Alan Bennett’s Enough Said
Alan Bennett’s diaries have always been about observation: small social details, absurd conversations, passing thoughts that somehow add up to a portrait of a whole country. Enough Said, his fourth collection of diaries and prose, takes up where Keeping On Keeping On left off, covering the turbulent years from 2016 to 2024, from Brexit and lockdown to the death of the Queen.
In between, Bennett travels to Paris and Venice, returns to Yorkshire, wanders through churches and galleries, celebrates herons and newts, and laments the disappearance of curlews, the closure of the last local bank and the slow unravelling of the welfare state. In 2024, he turns ninety, reflecting with characteristic wit on age, memory and luck. The book is full of the tiny, perfect details that make his diaries so beloved. At one point he tries pickled onions as a supposed cure for moles, only to find them flung out of the ground the next morning, leaving the lawn ‘smelling like a ploughman’s lunch’. Enough Said is published by Faber, and available to pre-order ahead of publication in March.
