The Latest Breaking News from Joan Didion

From Samuel Pepys to Joan Didion, many literary greats wrote for no one but themselves – then found posterity pawing through their secrets. Trust me: you don’t want to know my innermost thoughts

Editorial: Would the legendary American writer have welcomed the publication of her therapy notes? It seems unlikely

It follows Russia’s biggest ever aerial attack on Ukraine. Plus, far-right AfD doubles support in German election

Soon we can all read the late author’s private notes about her therapy. But should we?

The author recorded her thoughts on alcoholism, depression and her complex relationship with her daughter Quintana in the book, Notes to John

The film A Complete Unknown has sparked interest in the folk singers’ doomed romance, and with it the realization that a similar dynamic is ‘happening to girls everywhere’

Lili Anolik admits her first book on Eve Babitz, Hollywood’s Eve, was a way of “driving a stake” through her subject’s heart, hoping to end her self-confessed “unbalanced, fetishistic” obsession with the bohemian LA writer.

Salman Rushdie’s account of his near-fatal stabbing, a 360-degree view of Queen Elizabeth II and Al Pacino’s rags to riches career are among this year’s most compelling personal histories

THE READING LIST: A new book explores the friendship and rivalry between two very different chroniclers of Sixties and Seventies Los Angeles – and shines a light upon why a new generation of readers are still obsessed with Didion and Babitz decades later, writes Katie Rosseinsky