I’m a little apprehensive about reading my diaries from the 1990s, as my expectation is it will be full of how horrible my life was and how mean people were to me. I don’t think I’ll be keen on my attitude at the time. Did you come across any bits that were interesting? Because you could always rewrite those bits in a new book and keep a condensed version of just the interesting bits.

I agree that I don’t know if my husband or children will be interested in reading my diaries, but in 100 years they could provide people with a fascinating insight into our time. I just don’t know what you do with them until then. I haven’t looked back on mine before which is why I started reading them after 25 years as I thought it would motivated me to keep going (I’m currently in a patch when I didn’t write). It has been enjoyable up to now, but I suspect it is going to get a lot more angsty as I remember a lot of falling out with school friends.

I do keep a daily diary of just a few lines but to be honest that’s just for me, it’s things that I want to remember. I like to think that my separate detailed travel journals would be of interest to the children one day, and of course my blog, which has replaced my long diary!