Window to past

Such first-hand accounts have significantly enriched our understanding of the past and, in the case of Anne Frank’s memoirs, ensured that abominable acts such as the holocaust can neither be denied nor forgotten.

Now another chronicle of life in Nazi-occupied Europe is to reach a wider audience with the filming of a documentary on the life of Yorkshire academic Madeleine Blaess, whose unpublished diary was discovered among papers donated to the University of Sheffield after her death.

Given the fact that the keeping of a diary is becoming something of a lost art in the age of social media, it is to be hoped that this documentary might inspire others to put pen to paper. After all, it must be considered highly unlikely that half a century from now we will be gripped by inane tweets from today’s so-called “celebrities” on where they are spending their holidays.