BEATRIX POTTER'S SECRET TEENAGE DIARY

W E D N E S D A Y,  2  5  J A N

Mummy took Daddy extremely early to the airport: he’s going to Stockholm to look at some architecture. I wasn’t even up when she got back.

Read Vogue and Jackie in the morning, and Beatrix Potter’s diary the rest of the day. She writes a lot on Politics which I don't understand as we've never done Gladstone in History. I really ought to write something on Politics too, but I'm so uninterested in it. She lived in Kensington and wrote this in 1883, I think she was only 16.

"June 8th - They cut down the old walnut up the new road. Poor old tree. They are cutting a road across the field, preparatory to building. It is the last bit of the orchards left. On 15th they cut down the big mulberry on the left at the bottom of Gloucester Road, and most of the other trees. I wonder how the rooks know, they left these trees a very short time before they were felled, and they left the rookery in Kensington Gardens the autumn before the trees went."

Amazing she wrote all of it in code, which someone cleverly worked out a few years ago.

My hair isn't very nice at the moment. When it's ruffled it looks babyish, and freckles keep on popping up all over my face.

At 10.30pm Pa rang Ma from Stockholm, which was super.