People tend to say that I've led a lucky life, but the diary reveals an introspective, self-critical side.
And, lucky for Ruth, the diary's mysteries are a gift for any storyteller, even more so for one feeling stuck about her next project.
Carolina Maria de Jesus was lucky in the sense that her diary was published and she could move out of the favela.
A Very Unimportant Officer: Life and Death on the Somme and at Passchendaele, edited by Cameron Stewart (Hodder, £18.99), is the trench diary of Captain Alexander Stewart, who was lucky enough to make it home to Surrey.
As a memoirist, Nicolson had been relatively lucky; arriving into a family of "archivists and diary-keepers" she scrupulously followed suit.
At home on her sofa, she reflects that "I know that I'm lucky to be in a position to plan my diary around the kids' assemblies and sports days.
Credlin in very short order became the witch in the office, Abbott's lucky charm, the enforcer, the over-stepper, the punisher, the keeper of the diary and the door.
"I was just very lucky I snuck in there," says Happy Massee of the Polaroid on the cover of his new book, "Diary of a Set Designer".
I've been lucky enough to read an advance proof of Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey: My Own Life, which takes the form of the diary Aubrey never wrote, using predominantly his own words.
