Postcard Confidential: Four years ago, Frank Warren asked 3,000 people to each mail him an anonymous secret on a postcard

Published on Friday 10 October 2008 20:40

Today, millions of people visit his award-winning PostSecret website.

WE ALL have secrets, things perhaps no one else in the world knows. Some of them are guilty, dirty secrets; affairs, perhaps, dark thoughts or crimes unconfessed. Others are more to do with hopes, worries and petty jealousies that we dare not share with others for fear of revealing our true selves. So what a relief it must be to pass on those deepest thoughts anonymously.

When he originally handed out 3,000 self-addressed postcards in 2004, Frank Warren didn't realise how much his idea would capture the public's imagination. He asked random strangers to send a personal secret to him, anonymously, and what came back was a collection of, sometimes beautiful, hand-made cards. The result was the PostSecret website (postsecret.blogspot.com) and, now, The Secret Lives of Men and Women, a book focusing on the secrets in all relationships.

From "When I was married I put pulverised sleeping pills in my husband's food" and "I wish I could remember who my mom was before her disease stole her mind" to "I once gave LSD to a possum" and "I have eaten dog in a foreign country... and I liked it", the postcards are an intoxicating combination of the hilarious to the heart-warming (and occasionally a bit icky).

Warren doesn't believe that it matters whether the secrets are true or not. "The postcards work like art. So to ask me if the postcards are true or false is like asking if a painting or sculpture in a museum is fiction or non-fiction," he says. "My hope is that everyone who comes to the project learns something of others and discovers a little more about themselves."

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The Secret Lives of Men and Women (12.99, Orion), by Frank Warren, is published on Thursday. Scotland on Sunday readers can order copies for the special price of 10.99 by calling 01903 828503 and quoting reference number PB023. UK postage and packing is free; for delivery overseas, add an extra 1.60