diff --git a/simple_history/template_utils.py b/simple_history/template_utils.py
index 55d0c941..eb871c20 100644
--- a/simple_history/template_utils.py
+++ b/simple_history/template_utils.py
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 import dataclasses
-from typing import Any, Dict, Final, List, Type, Union
+from os.path import commonprefix
+from typing import Any, Dict, Final, List, Tuple, Type, Union
 
 from django.db.models import ManyToManyField, Model
 from django.template.defaultfilters import truncatechars_html
@@ -115,3 +116,87 @@ def stringify_delta_change_value(self, change: ModelChange, value: Any) -> str:
         value = conditional_escape(value)
         value = truncatechars_html(value, self.max_displayed_delta_change_chars)
         return value
+
+
+class ObjDiffDisplay:
+    """
+    A class grouping functions and settings related to displaying the textual
+    difference between two (or more) objects.
+    ``common_shorten_repr()`` is the main method for this.
+
+    The code is based on
+    https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.12.0/Lib/unittest/util.py#L8-L52.
+    """
+
+    def __init__(
+        self,
+        *,
+        max_length=80,
+        placeholder_len=12,
+        min_begin_len=5,
+        min_end_len=5,
+        min_common_len=5,
+    ):
+        self.max_length = max_length
+        self.placeholder_len = placeholder_len
+        self.min_begin_len = min_begin_len
+        self.min_end_len = min_end_len
+        self.min_common_len = min_common_len
+        self.min_diff_len = max_length - (
+            min_begin_len
+            + placeholder_len
+            + min_common_len
+            + placeholder_len
+            + min_end_len
+        )
+        assert self.min_diff_len >= 0  # nosec
+
+    def common_shorten_repr(self, *args: Any) -> Tuple[str, ...]:
+        """
+        Returns ``args`` with each element converted into a string representation.
+        If any of the strings are longer than ``self.max_length``, they're all shortened
+        so that the first differences between the strings (after a potential common
+        prefix in all of them) are lined up.
+        """
+        args = tuple(map(self.safe_repr, args))
+        maxlen = max(map(len, args))
+        if maxlen <= self.max_length:
+            return args
+
+        prefix = commonprefix(args)
+        prefixlen = len(prefix)
+
+        common_len = self.max_length - (
+            maxlen - prefixlen + self.min_begin_len + self.placeholder_len
+        )
+        if common_len > self.min_common_len:
+            assert (
+                self.min_begin_len
+                + self.placeholder_len
+                + self.min_common_len
+                + (maxlen - prefixlen)
+                < self.max_length
+            )  # nosec
+            prefix = self.shorten(prefix, self.min_begin_len, common_len)
+            return tuple(prefix + s[prefixlen:] for s in args)
+
+        prefix = self.shorten(prefix, self.min_begin_len, self.min_common_len)
+        return tuple(
+            prefix + self.shorten(s[prefixlen:], self.min_diff_len, self.min_end_len)
+            for s in args
+        )
+
+    def safe_repr(self, obj: Any, short=False) -> str:
+        try:
+            result = repr(obj)
+        except Exception:
+            result = object.__repr__(obj)
+        if not short or len(result) < self.max_length:
+            return result
+        return result[: self.max_length] + " [truncated]..."
+
+    def shorten(self, s: str, prefixlen: int, suffixlen: int) -> str:
+        skip = len(s) - prefixlen - suffixlen
+        if skip > self.placeholder_len:
+            s = "%s[%d chars]%s" % (s[:prefixlen], skip, s[len(s) - suffixlen :])
+        return s