Letters on a clothes line
Picasso seems to have had an ambivalent relationship to letters. He tortured himself by reading tirades from his ex-wife, and...
Pebble pusher
Keats, known as a poet, was also one of history’s great letter writers. He loved life and seized it even...
Letters and the lapse of time
A moving comment on the effects of time and separation, and the hiatus of news caused by war. Firstly, the...
A letter by boat and about a boat
This letter is magical. It is delivered by boat and announces the arrival of another boat at an assignation point.
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Letters tolerably long
Gaskell has many Jane Austen touches in cheerily summing up lightweight characters. But inconsequent as the letter and the writer...
Red letter day
A red letter day is a holiday or a memorable day, something that might be marked on the calendar in...
Plus ça change…
There’s something reassuring in seeing that what appears an ‘issue’ today appeared equally so to people long ago. It puts...
Waiting for the post
Dorothy Wordsworth's journals were written in the closing years of the 18th century and the opening years of the 19th,...
The scrutiny that precedes reading
Yes, there is that small ceremony that precedes the reading of a letter, particularly a hand-written one delivered by post. ...
Keats on hand-writing
Keats' letters are treasures - he is every bit as fine a correspondent as he is a poet. Here he...
Mail at last
We forget, swamped as we are with constant connectivity, the past hunger for letters and news when travelling. I remember...
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