'Recklessly candid' diary wins the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

From uk.news.yahoo.com

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner has been named winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025.

The winner was announced by Chair of Judges, Robbie Millen, at a ceremony hosted at BMA House in London. Since its founding as the Samuel Johnson Prize in 1999, this is the first time the prize has been awarded to a diary. This marks Garner’s first major prize victory in the UK, who is recognised as one of the great Australian writers.

Millen said, “After the mysterious alchemy of the judging process, Helen Garner emerged as our unanimous choice. All six judges agreed that How to End a Story, the first diaries to win the Baillie Gifford Prize, is a remarkable, addictive book. Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to new heights.

It gives its readers a fascinating insight into the creative reality of a writer's life — the insecurities, the doubts, the flashes of ego. It is also a recklessly candid, unsparing, occasionally eye-popping account of the implosion of a marriage. Garner is a brilliant observer and listener — every page has a surprising, sharp or amusing thought.

                                                                                    How to End a Story (Press handout)

Her collected diaries will surely be mentioned alongside The Diary of Virginia Woolf. It's a big book but Garner is such good company — funny, original, clever, self-lacerating, always interesting — that we didn't want the story to end.”

How to End a Story is a volume of Garner’s inimitable diary entries, from the early stages of her career in bohemian Melbourne, publishing her debut novel while raising a young daughter in the 1970s; the throes of an all-consuming love affair in the 1980s; and clinging to a disintegrating marriage in the 1990s. Told with devastating honesty, steel-sharp wit and an ecstatic attention to the details of everyday life, this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize-winning book reveals the inner life of a woman in love, a mother, a friend and a formidable writer at work.

The Baillie Gifford Prize recognises and rewards the best of non-fiction and is open to authors of any nationality. As the winner, Helen Garner will receive £50,000, with the other shortlisted authors each receiving £5,000, bringing the total prize value to £75,000. The winner was chosen by this year’s judging panel: Robbie Millen, literary editor of The Times and The Sunday Times (chair); historian and author, Pratinav Anil; journalist and broadcaster, Inaya Folarin Iman; cultural historian, biographer and novelist, and previous winner of the prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett; deputy culture editor of The Economist, Rachel Lloyd; and author and biographer, Peter Parker.

                                                                           Helen Garner (Darren James Photography)

Their selection was made from over 350 books published between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

The judging panel each shared their favourite sentence from Helen Garner’s winning book:

Robbie Millen - "I wrench the cap off his Mont Blanc fountain pen and stab the proof copy with the nib, gripping the pen in my fist like a dagger. I stab and stab, I press and screw and grind. The nib gives way, bleeding ink, and twists into a little golden knot."

Inaya Folarin Iman - “I will never be a great writer. The best I can do is to write books that are small but oblique enough to stick in people’s gullets so that they remember them.”

Lucy Hughes-Hallett - “When the others went out of the room I felt nervous, like a schoolgirl having to entertain a grown-up. As we walked away from the house R said, ‘Just as well neither of us are married to him!”

Peter Parker - “V says that women’s writing ‘lacks an overarching philosophy’. I don’t even know what that means. Also, I don’t care.”

Rachel Lloyd - “I think: the only way I can go on keeping a diary – the bits about myself, anyway, i.e. most of it – is to conceive of it as a record of soul. As it were in the presence of God, who is never fooled.”

Pratinav Anil - “I am beginning to see that you can’t numb yourself and step cleanly out of a marriage. You can’t just pack your stuff and walk out the door. There is no door. You have to dynamite your way out.”

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/recklessly-candid-diary-wins-baillie-221552236.html 

The secret diary of an Australian arts freelancer, aged 46¾

From artshub.com.au

Being an Australian arts freelancer can be lots of fun, right? Well, yes, kind of, but ... 

                                                                                                                 Image: Onischenko on Unsplash

7.30am

Wake in the dark before alarm goes off with an inexorable sense of dread that the wheel can’t be spun fast enough to avert disaster, AKA Just another day in the life of an Australian arts freelancer. LOLZ

7.35am

Bleary eyes backed up by reading glasses. Scan the news on my phone. Genocide, environmental disaster, flat-out fascism from unhinged world leaders and their milquetoast boosters, all present and incorrect. Timeline cleanse featuring fluffy kittens, film stars, fashion and hunks on Instagram to calm the apocalypse-borne despair. Nailed Wordle in three.

8am

Alarm buzzing, time to up and at ‘em. Existential crisis intensifies in shower, this time accompanied by an impromptu a cappella rendition of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. The Voice will not trouble me, but I can do this! Is that my neighbour joining me through the floor, or the neighbourhood dogs whelping??

8.15am

Dress for the job you want, they say. Pull on the same ratty old hoodie and worn-out joggie bottoms I’ve worn for three days, as trawled from the bedroom floor. Ready to sic a pick on the cultural coalface, just as soon as I’ve had at least two strong coffees and a heart murmur.

8.30am

At my desk, 150 new emails. How many of these can I delete, sight unseen? One, two, skip a few … Whyyyyyy has that one about being flown to a dance salon in Singapore been lingering in junk mail until it’s too late? I swear gremlins are working against me.

                                                                                                    Image: John on Unsplash

Drink a gallon of water to combat the caffeine shivers. Or is that just my crumbling apartment walls, devoid of insulation like my soul? Must. Mainline. More. Fluffy. Kittens.

8.45am

Ooh, opening night ticket* offered for an eight-hour abstract show deconstructing Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure on a ‘minimalist’ set consisting of four chalked lines drawn on a shed floor. Starring that woman from Married at First Sight, who has been reduced to wearing a bin bag and is sporting a forlorn look of career contemplation I recognise all too well, thanks Tay-Tay.

*No plus-one. Politely respond requesting a guest. Debriefing with them is a legit part of the process, bouncing ideas and recalibrating my perspective.

That, and we’re paid peanuts (who am I kidding, I can’t afford peanuts in this economy), so we gotta lock in the perks, however meagre. Theatre tickets are exxy, after all, and industry-standard plus-ones plus a free bar help make the humiliation bearable. 

8.55am

Reluctantly RSVP to the 892nd entry in a never-ending, but fully flagging, superhero franchise. Maybe this one won’t be a mess of weightless CGI, mindless McGuffins and stakes so low, despite yet another Armageddon out of here plot fixed in a jiffy with a dash of Deus Ex Machina. At least Florence Pugh’s in it.

Check IMDb. Three-and-a-half-hour film. Curses. At 7.30pm, far across town on the Wednesday night before it releases. Publicist, no doubt harangued by distributor execs, wants us to share reviews by 7am the next morning. Briefly wish it were the 1950s, when we wore pork-pie hats and had to run to a wooden telephone booth in the foyer to dictate a review in black and white.

But I am 46 and 3⁄4, not 76, and have no memory of those days. I’ve virtually no memory at all these days. Although I do seem to recall my first magazine gig was in a fuggy office laden with overflowing ashtrays, misogyny and no open windows.

9am

Ignoring all emails now unless they are directly relevant to the three deadlines I am trying to meet consecutively, like I’m competing in the Iron Man competition. The triathlon, not the Marvel one.

But first, this alluring missive about frequent flyer offers is commanding my attention, and that one about exceedingly modest real estate I can’t come close to accruing a deposit for, and maybe that 5000-word New Yorker feature about post-industrial bees.

9.15am

Have forgotten what I was doing, which is a sure sign it’s time to make a cup of tea. Stare out the kitchen window at birds frolicking in the trees and the weird neighbour shouting at clouds while the kettle boils. Mindfulness is basically weaponised procrastination and necessary.

Remember to eat breakfast – a stale cookie and a slice of plastic cheese – setting a new record for fuelling the brain before it grumbles into slow death shutdown.

9.30am

Back at desk, composing an emotionally staunch response for whichever of us is struggling in the freelancer WhatsApp support group. A necessary lifeline for work-from-home connection and a timely reminder that we are all up against it. It’s not just me. Oh, wait, do I need the pep talk??

                                                                                                Image: Amanz on Unsplash

9.45am

Begin review of last night’s contemporary dance work – yes, if you want to make freelance arts writing work, you’d better be multidisciplinary. Think of it as a one-person band with half the instruments broken and/or out of tune, as the general public sneers at you while refusing to part with their hard-earned cash – including annual leave and Super, lol.

Show was staged on a sinking ship in the harbour. There might be a metaphor here if I can just locate it.

                                                                              Image: Jason Mavrommatis on Unsplash

Spend over an hour crafting the most beautifully knitted intro connecting the key themes to their cultural context via a personal insight into why this matters now. Realise I’m 500 words in and haven’t mentioned the show’s name yet. Delete beautifully crafted intro.

11am

Time for another cup of tea and a vacant stare. Is it too early for lunch??

11.15am

Restart review of last night’s contemporary dance work. Definitely getting the feeling this might be allegorical. Is that water lapping at my ankles metaphorical, or is my decaying apartment flooding again??

Spot breaking news that almost every boundary-pushing, non-mainstage creative company, forging exciting pathways for artists while delivering exhilarating work that upends the canon, has been defunded for the next four years. Business as usual. Insert appropriate meme:

12.30pm

Review now reads like it hasn’t been concocted by shrieking monkeys. Read, reread, and finesse. Ready to file. Send off to editor. Ten-minute disassociation break. Bites nails.

12.45pm

Receive a call from an old-school publicist who prefers a nice chat to emails, which is blooming lovely, but strikes me with the fear I’ll forget what we’ve agreed. Lots of gossip over the arts funding massacre, commiseration over bank accounts.

They’re offering a pretty darn ritzy international A-list celebrity interview that will set editors into a frenzy as they will get so many eyeballs on it once it’s published. OF COURSE this dream ticket is in a heinous time zone for Australia. Is the 4am wake-up call worth it? That used to come with one caveat: ‘Is it Madonna?’ But I agree.

Immediately synopsise deets and send through in a confirmation email so I know it’s real and pop straight into phone diary with reminder alerts. Have no actual memory.

1pm

Email from editor. Didn’t attach the review. Rookie (and alarmingly regular) error. Actually filed it this time. Remember to chase production pics.

1.15pm

May as well triage emails while I’m in here. OFC editors are looking for the other two features on the go. Can I smash one out before lunch, or will I faint?

1.30pm

Lunch it is. Sunday’s roast chook goes a long way. Time to not actually learn how to speak a language via dawdling on Duolingo.

2pm

Back at it, trying to translate the true meaning behind a dodgy transcription of an interview with a performance art clown who fashions balloon sculptures like it’s the Rosetta stone.

                                                                                 Image: Leonid Shaydulin on Unsplash

No matter, listening back and tweaking as needed gets me right back in the conversation, and there’s endless amusement at wonky words that always seem to lean towards inadvertent innuendo.

3.30pm

Chat’s flowing into shape on the page/Word doc, once I figured out what said clown actually said. Yes, I can corral this 10,000-word transcript into an 800-word count yarn while maintaining both of our artistic integrity.

Maybe the off-cuts will come in handy one day? When’s the anniversary of Stephen King’s It?

4.30pm

Miraculously managed to file second story for the day and even remembered to attach it this time. Fist pump. Quick check of emails. Review is already live, whoot.

Time to share that on multifarious nefarious social media platforms owned by technocrat oligarchs. Of course I should tailor the vibe to each site, but fark me, who has time?

                                                                                     Image: camilo jimenez on Unsplash

5pm

Another phone call, this time on an unrecognised number. Might be the ATO. Not answering. Quick scan for terrifying MyGov email. Escape unscathed another day. Should prob invoice for these two features while I remember.

Check bank account. Still terminal. Draft pass-mostly-aggro ‘sick of your shit’ emails. Pause. Disassociate. Redraft politely pleading ones begging for three-month-old invoices to be rushed through. My time, so very often, is not money.

5.30pm

Begin third story for the day, which should be a fun little listicle highlighting the most appealing events in an upcoming writers’ festival. Prioritising women, people of colour and queer folks, because natch. Sorry Tim Winton.

6.30pm

After deep diving through the festival’s website, I still only have a list of ten events with no accompanying text. Why, oh why do I pour so much into these things?? Oh crud, I forgot tonight’s screening of a long-lost Czech stop-animation about anthropomorphic rabbits who foment a social uprising. Who needs dinner?

7.30pm

Got to the cinema just in time to ask for the second wine pour down so as not to feel like a total lush. Of course, the listicle is barely formed, ready to do it all again early tomorrow morn, but for now, socialism in surreal puppetry form.

9.15pm

Checking emails again on the tram home. Crud. Also forgot I’m on the radio tonight talking about how mushroom poisoning can offer a new perspective on arts funding.

Just need to get home first and hope the gods of internet connection will shine their favour on me while crossing to the ABC from my blackspot study.

10pm

On-air interview done. 14-hour day over. Invoiced $300 lol. Thank god I love this gig. Now, to pour a full epic wine and unwind. Maybe just one more look at those emails…

Ohhhhhhhh that celebrity chat is now TOMORROW at 4am??? Better get prepping…

If you have been affected by any of the themes in this article, please do reach out to other freelancers: it’s tough out there!

https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/the-secret-diary-of-an-australian-arts-freelancer-aged-46%C2%BE-2815859/

Book review: Pity The Swagman -The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist by Bethan Phillips

From nation.cymru

‘A waste of precious time and good candles’. This was the view expressed by Jenkin and Elinor Jenkins regarding their son Joseph keeping a diary, which he kept throughout his life, in Wales and Australia, having commenced in January 1839.

It’s just as well he paid no attention to his parents on this occasion, or else there would have been nothing for the late William Evans, a retired heart specialist and the diarist’s grandson, to edit and have published.

Likewise, “Pity The Swagman: The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist” by the late Bethan Phillips (having been republished by Y Lolfa this year), would not exist.

What we have here is quite the weighty volume, which surprised me at first, though I’m not sure why.

Having examined Joseph’s life through his diaries and providing additional historical context for the reader as she went (such as, among many other matters the Rebecca Riots, limited suffrage and the lack of a secret ballot in Wales, to the mistreatment of Chinese workers and indigenous Australians as well as the exploits of the Kelly Gang in Australia) Phillips succeeded in covering a lot of ground in great detail here, with equal weight given to Joseph’s life both in Ceredigion and Victoria.

               Pity The Swagman: The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist by Bethan Phillips is published by Y Lolfa

Drinking

A successful farmer, respected poet, friend of landlords and politicians in Wales, who took a great interest in education and transport (as his involvement with opening a school locally and helping to ensure the railway came to his corner of the world demonstrates) life for Joseph became increasingly undone between Joseph’s increasing socialising and drinking.

Indeed, the author notes that “Joseph was now a confirmed alcoholic” by 1866.

Inevitably, this led to things becoming difficult at Trecefel, the family farm, not helped by his refusing to keep two maids on for another year, which made more work for his wife, Betty.

In addition, tragedy struck the family with the death of his eldest son Jenkin from Tuberculosis.

Joseph eventually leaves his home and family under a cloud in December 1868, leaving, we later learn from a letter his son Lewis sends him, debts of over £600.

The reader then accompanies him, guided by the author, to Australia and following a quarter century of living in the Colony (now State) of Victoria, we then accompany Joseph on his way back to Trecefel.

This is once more under a cloud, between the break ins he suffered at his home in the town of Maldon and the over £200 others owe him which is never repaid.

Ironic that Joseph left debts behind at Trecefel, only to then leave Australia having failed to recover money owed to him.

Self-pity

No punches are pulled by Phillips here. The biographer frequently comments on Joseph’s self-pity, the fact that he blames everything from his date of birth, to fate, to Betty, for any troubles he has, but never seems willing to take any personal responsibility.

As demonstrated by the diary entry and response to it below, the author also takes aim at Joseph’s hypocrisy:

“24 June 1887

Gold! Gold! Gold! – is on every tongue while the fine surface of the soil is shamefully neglected. Each man, myself excepted, appears to have come here to seek his fortune.”

To which Phillips responds:

“This entry smacks of crass hypocrisy: Joseph not only dug for gold on many occasions, but also bought shares in claims. During his moral spasms, however, he conveniently forgot such things.”

Despite no punches being pulled where necessary, Joseph was also given credit when it was due. He was certainly a man of contrasts. The author tells us for instance, how Joseph, aside from the very occasional drink, abstained from alcohol altogether during his time in Australia.

He also was given to “taking up the cause of those less fortunate than himself.” Examples mentioned include a letter he had published in “The Australian” newspaper dated the 18th of November 1869 in defence of Swagmen.

Indeed, it is from that letter that this volume takes its title. The reader also learns of how Joseph’s principles were at odds with his colleagues.

When a Chinese worker he once worked alongside experienced abuse, Joseph was “prepared to court unpopularity in defending the rights of an abused fellow worker”.

In 1887, Joseph agreed to help an indigenous man named Equinhup “nicknamed ‘Tom Clarke’ by the whites” to claim compensation from The Railway Commission, as they’d taken land from his tribe.

After Joseph composed a letter for Equinhup to present to the Commission, they agreed to pay him “£1 in silver as compensation, but with a promise of more.” As Phillips notes “Whether or not this promise was kept is not known.”

Poetry

Accompanying this balanced, almost impossible to put down biography, are a collection of photographs from Wales and Australia, which aid the reader in visualising locations and events mentioned.

In addition, the appendices include the original Welsh drafts of Joseph’s poetry (the author noting in the acknowledgements the decision was made to include translations into English in the main body of the text “in the interest of facilitating the flow of reading”) a copy of Joseph’s will and information about the vessels he sailed on to reach Australia and to return home.

Having gone to Australia on impulse in 2016 myself (and even then, only for a month, to visit friends & relatives) to get away from the frustration of not having any luck finding work in Wales (only to then be offered a role as a butler three weeks into my stay by a very good friend, which I couldn’t accept, though I was very grateful for the offer) Joseph’s diary & more recently this biography, proved to be a very interesting read indeed. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

In fact, I spoke to Alan (who’d offered me the butler role in Australia) just prior to receiving my copy of “Pity the Swagman”.

We had a very interesting chat, with Alan telling me me about how he’d retraced Joseph’s steps in Victoria, calling at the various locations he’d been to during his life there, visiting the plaque to commemorate Joseph in Maldon, and visiting his grave on a return visit to Wales.

He also mentioned how he tried to find written records of the Eisteddfodau Joseph competed in during his time in Australia, but sadly, he was informed they were apparently lost in a fire some years ago.

Having arrived in Australia in 1969, a hundred years after Joseph, Alan also remarked “He was paid better than me!” (for doing the same agricultural work, adjusted for inflation I suppose.) I wonder what Joseph would have made of agricultural workers still being short changed, a century after his own arrival in Australia?

I have mentioned to my dear friend before now that he ought to put pen to paper himself.

Pity The Swagman: The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist by Bethan Phillips is published by Y Lolfa and is available from all good bookshops.

https://nation.cymru/culture/book-review-pity-the-swagman-the-australian-odyssey-of-a-victorian-diarist-by-bethan-phillips/