The American chef Julia Child describes how her husband approached letter-writing in an age when trans-Atlantic telephone calls were prohibitively expensive and letter-writing was the normal way to stay in touch at a distance.  It inspired me to start writing letters again after a hiatus of half a year – the first six pager was sent off a week or two ago, and I have dusted down my home-printed letter paper to add others to the pile of Christmas cards I’ve prepared.  

The letters Paul and Julia Child wrote were kept and later proved the basis for this book about their life in France in the 1950s. 

Paul took lettering writing seriously: he’d set aside time for it, tried to document our day-to-day lives in a journalistic way, and usually wrote three to six pages a week in a beautiful flowing hand with a special fountain pen; often he included little sketches of places we’d visited, or photos … or made mini-collages out of ticket stubs or newsprint. 

Source: Julia Child, My Life in France (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), p. 7