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?
Letters burned (I)
It always saddens me to learn of letters burned or destroyed; including those we will never see because Jane Austen's sister destroyed them after Jane's death. Here Edmund de Waal tells us of what may have been an epistolic treasure trove burned by his...
Most reprehensible
This charming exchange is from a favourite children's book, discovered and devoured when already a so-called grown up.I liked the child owning up in guilt to a shameful act, and the adult's sneaky response. Let it be said that Ambrose is a dream uncle who educates...
Postcards from the future
Enjoy this charming project which invited children aged 5-12 to design and write postcards from the future, addressed to parents, or a friend, or simply to '2022'. The gallery of drawings this generated have some common themes, along with the personal messages. I...
Write and gripe
I like letter writers who gripe about the responses (or lack of) from correspondents. Pliny is the arch whinger when he doesn't think his friends have written him fast, frequent or long enough letters. But I liked Bernstein's keeping tally - a 7-pager deserves at...
What is a letter? A tactile written communication that bridges distance and lasts forever.
Plus ça change…
There’s something reassuring in seeing that what appears an ‘issue’ today appeared equally so to people long ago. It puts the issue in perspective and makes it seem an eternal, pointless fuss....
Write and gripe
I like letter writers who gripe about the responses (or lack of) from correspondents. Pliny is the arch whinger when he doesn't think his friends have written him fast, frequent...
The innovation of envelopes
They’re so ubiquitous that it’s a surprise to learn envelopes were a mid-nineteenth century invention. Somewhere in Gaskell I remember a character protesting at this new-fangled costly creation. Previously people...
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,...
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...
A packet of yellow love letters
What happened to all those love letter in a private drawer, sent and kept over centuries when this was the main medium for long distance love making? The population is larger...
Key Performance Indicators … with a twist
'Here and there in the leafy glade of her letters a ripe berry of information gleams.'
When was the last time you saw a Key Performance Indicator that grabbed or...
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 here, suspends letters in full view, like clothes on a...
A mosaic of letters
Referring to the letters between Mary Delany and her beloved sister Anne, Molly Peacock aptly describes them as a paper mosaic, given that Mary more or less invented the art...
Red letter day
A red letter day is a holiday or a memorable day, something that might be marked on the calendar in red. For me it’s also a ‘red letter day’ when...
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...
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