The Diarists: This week in history

21 October 1980

Andy Warhol artist: "I ran into a boy whose job it is to go shopping for John and Yoko, to buy them clothes… I asked him if they ever wore any of the clothes they bought since they don't go out and he said, 'They're going to make a comeback. They've been wearing them to the studio.' The best thing he said was that when he started to work for them he had to sign a paper that said, 'I will not write a book about John Lennnon and Yoko Ono.' Isn't that great?"

21 October 1948

JR Ackerley writer and editor:

"What should I do if I came upon a murder, I sometimes ask myself as Queenie [his dog] and I push our way through the vast tangles of bracken where few other people walk? The common is a likely place for murder, as it is for suicide – the angry lustful man who finds he is not, after all, to be granted the sexual relief that his pick-up has led him to expect. What should I do, I ask myself, if I suddenly smelt something nasty – as I often do – and pushing along came across a strangled woman? I wouldn't do anything, unless I covered it up with leaves to give the murderer a better chance of escape. I certainly wouldn't report it. I've harboured thoughts of murder myself in my life, I could never help to denounce or catch someone else."

23 October 1969

Roy Strong then director of the National Portrait Gallery: "I was asked to one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's press lunches. The faded architectural pomp of Lambeth Palace is bizarrely at variance with the lower-middle-class lifestyle lived within. Sherry and orange juice were followed by a utilitarian lunch of stew, apple pie and cream and cheese… After lunch, [the Archbishop] held forth, rather apologetically, predicting a further decline of the Church of England, the saving grace being that Christian attitudes were still important in a society even if they were no longer connected with belief."