I’ve never kept a diary. But if I had, I’d want it destroyed when I die

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

A few years ago, a friend asked me to be her literary executor". We were both, I think, tickled by the grandiose sound of it, as if I would be playing off competing bids from the Bodleian and the New York Public Library for her juvenilia and early drafts (she is not actually primarily a writer). What she wants, though, is quite serious: I am to destroy her diaries when she dies.

That is because they aren't meant for anyone's eyes but her own. Whatever is in there (I don't know, didn't ask), it was never meant for public consumption. Many diarists feel that way: Sheila Hancock wrote about destroying decades' worth of hers: Maybe this vicious, verging-on-insane woman is the real me, but if it is I don't want my daughters to find out."

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist