We don’t have to look far to see how rare it is, nowadays, for people to communicate by putting pen to paper. It is not only those born into the computer age who don’t think of doing it. Even very old people, including me, have friends whose handwriting they have never seen. We all communicate, of course (tweet tweet tweet, and yack yack yack on the mobile), but not by pen and ink. Does it matter?

I didn’t have to read 274 pages to be persuaded that it does, but I am very glad indeed that those pages were written and that I have read them. From this book, the wisest and wittiest argument imaginable for the preservation of handwriting, I have learnt so much, and