For about fifty years, St. Petersburg prose writer, playwright, screenwriter Semyon Laskin (1930–2005) kept a diary. Twenty-four notebooks contained a huge number of people and events. There are “end-to-end” heroes here, running through almost all the records - V. Aksenov, G. Gore, I. Averbakh, D. Granin, and there are meetings that did not continue, but are remembered forever - with A. Akhmatova, I. Ehrenburg, V. Kaverin. All his life, Laskin was fond of painting, and stories about his friendship with St. Petersburg artists A. Samokhvalov, P. Kondratiev, R. Frumak, I. Zisman form a separate story here. The compiler, author of notes and explanatory text preceding each chapter of the book was the son of Semyon Laskin, prose writer and historian Alexander Laskin. Illustrative material from the Laskin family archive is published for the first time.