A Life Discarded

In 2001, 148 tattered notebooks were discovered lying in a skip on a building site in Cambridge.

The pages were filled to the edges with urgent handwriting.

They were a small part of an intimate, anonymous diary, starting in 1952 and ending half a century later, a few weeks before the books were thrown out.

Over five years, the award-winning biographer Alexander Masters uncovers the identity and real history of their author, with an astounding final revelation.