It is fair to say my time is, indeed, taken up with many things – including the dinner parties and meetings or discussions with friends that you mention in your letter – but also so arranged that I always have time to receive and read letters, and then make time to write a half-way decent…

For a while, many years ago, I had a web site which covered the idea of letter writing, of how to frame a letter, who to contact, what to write about. It was a moderate success, but didn’t really satisfy the need. Rather, I discovered, it covered all those platitudes which every other site sets…