Natalie Haynes: Hooray for diarists like Burton

I'm never entirely sure what the difference is between a movie actor and a movie star, but I think the ability to render the phrase, "Broadsword calling Danny Boy", the most explosive words in the English language, even for just a couple of hours, might define it. Richard Burton was a movie star in every sense: from the weak strongman, Mark Antony, right through to the screen-munching menace he brought to O'Brien in 1984.

And now his diaries, which number some 450,000 words, kept from the age of 14 to his death, are to be published. I love diaries and letters – writings that are often unconsidered and unedited – because they seem to reveal the writer's true character in a way that studied interview responses, especially when filtered through a journalist's pen, often don't. Even authors who know the value of their diaries for future reading can't help but write things they wouldn't if publication were imminent.

I can't wait to read Burton's diaries, especially since the excerpts are extraordinary. He describes Elizabeth Taylor as "shy and witty, she is nobody's fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography". He worries about his weight and his drinking, yet he seems no less exotic for worrying about the prosaic.

I suspect diary-keepers are an endangered breed nowadays, like pandas with pens. How many of us still write letters when whacking an email over to someone is so much more immediate?

And how many people commit their deepest thoughts, hopes and fears to a journal rather than to Twitter or Facebook?

While I'm a fan of social media for their very instant banality, I will miss the publication of private letters and diaries.

The effort of writing longhand, the knowledge that the work will remain private until after the death of the author, creates a freedom and depth that is entirely missing from the soundbites of tweets.