I am told there are certain rules about what is correct, when writing a letter to someone, and what is unacceptable. I am told that letters should have a certain format; that they should be on a specific size of paper; that the envelope should be addressed in a certain manner, with a return address…

It seems to me as if, with the dawn of each new day, I begin something new. I’m not sure whether this thought has a name – optimism, perhaps – but it is not something that everyone has or feels as they open their eyes and realise, to their surprise or gratitude, that they are…

It doesn’t take the mind of a rocket scientist to discover one of the saddest facts of life: some of those people around us, those we trust and rely upon, do not necessarily have more than their own interests at heart, and most certainly not ours. We get to see such people every single day,…

It is rare to find someone with an interest in history and quotations, unless you restrict your search to the colleges and universities which litter our various lands, and the hidden recesses of libraries and archives within their deepest shadows. We tend to think of a historian – and often librarians too – as old…

There is a strange thing about being creative, as your profile says that you are, which many people seem to misunderstand. There is a belief that being creative means a person goes into art, paints or draws, writes books, short stories or even whimsical poems and, perhaps, even leads a Bohemian lifestyle. Naturally, that last…

I was one of those strange children, many years ago, who did not want to grow up, who did not rue the slowness of time and certainly wasn’t looking forward to being a teenager enjoying all the supposed freedoms of age and life. Rather, I took a very critical view of the passage of time…

I am caught, as the saying goes, between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand there is the clear incentive, from your profile, to write on so many different things where we, worlds and continents apart, have similar interests and, perhaps, desires. On the other there is the thought, coupled sadly with…

If I was a Victorian wife, living in the centre of London at the height of fashionable times for letter writing communication, I would, like Jane Welsh Carlyle and her Husband Thomas, probably feel personally slighted if I did not receive a letter without any explanation of why. Married couples who were separated for any…

Today I have been thinking about the strange things in life which happen to us, the coincidences, the things which seem to be really out of the ordinary and which, when we stop to think about them, make us wonder how such a small matter, through the whole of time and this world, could ever…

I will be perfectly honest and say that I am glad the practice of photocopying people’s letters and photographs and them destroying the originals is not widespread, I find it an absolutely horrific assault on the art of letter writing, and especially personal and intimate possessions such as photographs. At the same time I can…