It is not the length of time that it takes, more the fact that a letter manages to get through the system and can be delivered and then, the highlight of all things, is replied to. The hiring freeze across all federal areas is only going to make things worse, so a good deal of…

I admit, there is a massive difference between stepping into something you know and have been able to prepare yourself for, and being forced into a situation where you have no knowledge whatsoever of what will happen, how the whole system works, and how you will be received in it; which made the description in…

Firstly I must admit that I have a copy of the complete works of Michael de Montaigne permanently on my writing desk and, when lost for a few suitable words, glance in its direction to remind myself that there is always something to write about or, as Pliny the Younger admirably demanded when Fabius Justus…

I finished my last letter to you with a reference to the long conversation carried out over one hundred and twenty years about the value of Cicero’s Latin. What I didn’t point out was that this conversation began considerably earlier, but was not considered part of the whole; not waged between Renaissance Humanists trying to…

Someone asked me recently how it is possible for me – or anyone else, I presume – to write to a person I do not know; how can I find anything to write about and where, if any, are the connections to those I write to. The person who asked is one of those whose…

In her introduction to Pliny’s Letters, published in 1969, Betty Radice notes that Gaius Plinius Luci filius Caecilius Secundus (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius of the tribe Oufentina, better known to us as Pliny the Younger) followed the principle of a single theme for his letters rather than the scholastic Rule of Three…

Asking questions is not one of my strong points when it comes to writing letters, or even getting to know people in real life, and that despite a reasonably strong belief that the best way to let someone reveal themselves is to challenge them in some way; questions being the most immediate form of challenge…