A few years ago, a historian from The British Museum, Irving Finkel was introduced by a dealer to a vast collection of diaries spanning from 1879 to 1955, written by Godfrey Williams. The diaries had no where to go - The Imperial War Museum was only interested in the parts which covered the wars and the dealer who held them did not want to separate the collection. Out of curiosity Finkel decided to buy the complete volumes and so began a new kind of reading experience – he was hooked: “Each close-written and absorbing volume …as gripping as a novel… a winding inky narrative which observed and appraised the unpredictable unrolling of a good part of the twentieth century”. Finkel has been collecting and salvaging lost and unwanted diaries ever since, which he believes reveal the lives of otherwise undocumented and unknown individuals, trades, words and behaviour, which have slipped through the net. His ever-expanding collection is crammed into cabinets and boxes, threatening to take over his entire office behind the scenes at the British Museum, tucked away within a maze-like network of winding staircases and secret libraries. What is needed is an archive where all diaries could be sent and catalogued for future research or exhibition.
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