Quentin Letts loves the dying art – and how it reveals the writer’s character
One of the joys of being a columnist is that one still receives handwritten letters from strangers. Some are complimentary, others are mad and a few are initially illegible. You have to wash your eyeballs and give the monocle a polish before tackling them. I have a correspondent from Kenchester, Herefordshire, whose script is a frenzied eruption, his ballpoint so vigorous that it tears holes in his recycled paper. The lines of a spinster from Ightham, Kent, slope increasingly towards the bottom right corner of the page. Her letters start equably enough before lurching into an unhappiness that matches the nosediving angle of the script. An amateur poet from Waterlooville, Hampshire, sends thick packets of mercurial political observations, cc’d to other Fleet Street hacks, all compiled in a neat, looping hand. He has been writing to me for three decades and must spend thousands a year on postage. Now that...
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