Letters are a tactile written communication traversing centuries and continents, bringing other people, places and times to life with immediacy and personality. Here we celebrate this ancient form of exchange. Send me a handwritten postcard, will you?
A letter in the dark
A desperate and yet hopeful act, this. People throwing letters out of trains taking them to the gulag, trusting that those letters may be found, and found, sent, and sent, reach their destination. And how much more remarkable that some of those letters, cast into an...
A beautiful flowing hand
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...
In my pocket, in my heart
From time to time I receive a long and handwritten letter from one of my brothers and I am long overdue in responding to him. I think this comment from the German poet Hölderlin to his sister is as good a prompt as I could hope for. How lovely that he took her...
Signs of civilization
I liked Durrell's simple assessment of two building blocks of a recovering civilization after the ravages of war: a functioning post office and a few working street lamps. See also Stefan Zweig's comments on the difficulties of communicating during war time, and Iris...
What is a letter? A tactile written communication that bridges distance and lasts forever.
Another long letter
Those were the days when conversations at a distance had to be committed to paper, and I like Bronte's preparation for writing a long letter on the grounds that the...
Pebble pusher
Keats, known as a poet, was also one of history’s great letter writers. He loved life and seized it even as it slipped away from him, embracing moments of joy centuries...
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.
So much promise! May the whole world seem to be...
The merry mind
The actress Ingrid Bergman had a short relationship with the photographer Robert Capa. I love this quotation from a letter he sent her, with its idea of a ‘merry mind’. I...
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 sorrow and regret of discovering the death of a loved...
Letters unwritten
When a friend mentioned the special paper she’d bought to write me a letter, which she hadn’t yet done, I started thinking about unwritten letters, the ones we plan or...
Letters unsent (II)
Clemency Burton-Hill describes the sight that greeted friends of the composer and pianist Erik Satie when, following his death in 1925, they were finally able to enter his apartment, to...
This is the world
Keats was one of the most life-loving people you could hope to meet, grasping with all his force every chance of happiness, even evanescent, and despite being repeatedly assaulted by...
The spirit of the letter
Luiz found this beautiful book at our favourite flea market in Geneva. I liked the cover image and title, which echoes the English idea of keeping to ‘the spirit of...
The pleasure of paper post
One of the greatest pleasures of Christmas, for me anyhow, is the sending and receiving of cards, one of the few genres of paper post that still seem to hold...
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, when the postal system had not evolved to last-mile delivery. ...
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