Lindsay Anderson’s diaries – fifty years of story telling and history
The Lindsay Anderson Archive holds 91 diaries which he kept from 1942-1992. This covers an incredible period of travel, film making, theatre directing and includes a wealth of detail about Anderson’s thoughts, feelings and experiences that we couldn’t glean from just examining his working papers. And it is this well-rounded breadth of information – both professional and personal – which makes the Lindsay Anderson Archive so rich.
It’s always interesting to wonder what intentions lie behind diary writing – so many personal diaries have been published over the years and it can be difficult to tell if any of the diarists ever thought their innermost feelings would be so widely read. In the case of Anderson’s diaries, he gives us an insight into his intentions himself in his very first diary. It’s a rare consideration of the mechanics of diary writing – how truthful does he intend to be with himself? Who is he writing for? – and also an interesting definition for Anderson of the difference between keeping a diary and keeping a journal.
One of my principal New Years resolutions it to keep a journal – not, please note, a diary, for a diary besides being, for me, far too exacting an undertaking will also inevitably include a large mass of uninteresting and unnecessary detail (got up, had breakfast etc) In this journal I shall write only when I have something to say; its purpose is both to remind me in after years of how I felt and what I did at this time and also – quite unashamedly – to give me literary exercise. It should help improve my style and my ability to express myself and many of the incidents it records will not doubt prove excellent copy. I will however not tell lies in order to improve a story, or if I do I will say so.
I am not sure whether or not it will be absolutely frank; I am not used to writing solely to myself – and that perhaps is why I am so quick to mistrust published diaries. So at first at any rate I will probably be fairly reserved. And yet this is absurd: either I am writing for myself or for a friend or friends or for publication. Well I can cross out the last – though of course I can easily expurgate it if necessary. Nor am I writing for my friends. I will therefore resolve to be utterly frank – a resolution which I do not think I can possibly keep! So here we go:
1st January 1942
The nature of Anderson’s diaries, what he will write and how he will convey it seems to be something which occupies his mind with each new journal he starts. At the start of his journal for 1944, he writes:
‘Journal for 1944 – an intermittent record of life in an uncongenial occupation, together with some observations of interest if not importance on life, art, politics and other general subjects, all set down with as much candour, charity, perspicacity as it is in the power of the author to command and with humour but not facetiety, pomposity or undue cynicism.’
In a different colour, the word ‘pomposity’ is circled and questioned. Did Anderson review his diaries often and question his own narrative?
Though Anderson decides firmly in his first journal that these memories are for him to examine, perhaps he revises this impression as time goes on. Later journals are indexed, either with key terms highlighting the topic of each paragraph written on the left hand page, or key terms written in a different colour pen (often red) within the text itself. Is this for Anderson’s own benefit, to help him browse his diaries with ease? Or does he begin to wonder if his diaries will find other uses one day? He certainly finds by 1951 that he’s unconvinced that he’s writing for himself alone:
‘Oh! To whom? Perhaps that is the first question. For when, over the past year or two, I have thought of starting a journal, the question has always presented itself – unanswerably. Who am I to write for? The answer ‘for myself’ has always seemed insufficient. Yet anyway one can’t write intimacies for the world to read. I don’t want to write for publication.’
10th October 1951
Anderson’s diaries often take the form of bound books – some embossed, some gifted, some beautiful, some from WH Smith – but we also hold many loose pages in this series that come together to form a string of diary entries. Some entries are incomplete, sometimes there are gaps between them and summaries of the intervening periods, some years he writes nothing at all. From time to time, Anderson plays with how he writes, sometimes shifting to the third person for an entry. Anderson uses these diaries to discuss his feelings about events and towards people, reflections on past projects and hopes for future work, his fears and insecurities about his career and his abilities, arguments that he has and first impressions of people that he meets, which must be interesting to reflect on where relationships form.
Friends and those he admires have a heavy bearing on his diaries. Anderson accounts whole meetings with individuals in minute detail, keeps notes and poems and sketches authored by others and compiles lists of quotes from those he spends time with. Such items often find their way in between the pages of these diaries, alongside tickets and posters and programmes – some of which you can see in the ‘Look inside’ section of the Lindsay Anderson Diaries main page.
But as well as being a deeply personal look at his travels and activities, Anderson also uses these diaries as a sounding board for his work – he makes notes for articles he’s working on, he critiques films and plays that he has seen (though, who is to say how much of this is work and how much pleasure) and he discusses his own work and career choices. It is this completeness of his diaries that makes them not only an interesting and enjoyable read but a key source of information in researching Lindsay Anderson. You can take a look at some ways in which these diaries have been used for research in the ‘Using the diaries for research’ section of the Lindsay Anderson Diaries main page.
