![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worldletterwritingday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/3.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt\u2019s Valentine\u2019s Day on Friday 14th February. In anticipation of the day, and in the hope of rekindling a fondness for the handwritten love letter, Royal Mail is dedicating a number of its letter boxes to some of Britain\u2019s greatest romantics. Quotations from John Keats, Robert Burns, and Thomas Hardy, among others, will adorn postboxes around the land.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t pretend to be a dab hand at love-letter writing myself, and if you aren\u2019t either but would like to be, read on.<\/p>\n
Help is not just at hand \u2013 it\u2019s here, now, in this very blog you\u2019re reading.<\/p>\n
Hand-written love letters are a thing of the past – and that\u2019s sad, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
I met a group of young people the other day, not one of whom had ever sent or received a love letter. One of them claimed not even to know what a love letter is. Seriously, he\u2019d heard about \u2018French letters\u2019 and said he\u2019d always assumed \u2018love letters\u2019 were some form of old-fashioned contraceptive. I put him right.<\/p>\n
I asked a girl in the group how she would indicate to a young man that he had taken her fancy, if not with a love letter. She said she text him an emoji of a smiley face. And if you fancied him a lot? I asked. \u2018A smiley face with a tongue hanging out,\u2019 she replied. And how would he respond if he fancied you? I enquired. \u2018He\u2019d send me an emoji of an aubergine,\u2019 she said with satisfaction.<\/p>\n
She can do better than that, surely? We can all do better than that \u2013 and we have 72 hours left before Valentine\u2019s Day 2019 in which to try.<\/p>\n
Yes, this is the week in which to send the love of your life the letter of your life! Welcome to the Brandreth master-class on the art of love-letter writing.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t worry, the rules I am about to share have been compiled by me, but they are not my rules: these are the lessons of history.<\/p>\n
In preparing this crash course in love-letter writing, I have taken soundings from a number of authorities (all female), ranging from women of experience (the great historian, Lady Antonia Fraser, has compiled the definitive anthology of love letters) to the three young, unattached journalists, aged 26, 27, and 30. As part of my researches, I even made a pilgrimage to Ladbroke Grove and took a masterclass of my own from the award-winning novelist and literary historian, Dame Margaret Drabble, who in one of her novels evoked the love affair and marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Browning – \u2018their story is the paradigm of perfect love\u2019, she says – and has read more widely, more wisely, than anyone I know.<\/p>\n
So, if you want to woo and win – or simply wow – the one you love, here are the rules, drawn from the experience of the great love-letter writers of yesteryear:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1. Be passionate. <\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018A love letter must be full of fire,\u2019 says Drabble. \u2018Napoleon wrote cracking good love letters to Josephine. William Wordsworth wrote quite passionately to Mary. Jane Carlyle poured energy and all her literary talent into the letters she wrote to Thomas Carlyle. Jane Austen would write you a witty letter, but she was too proper to be passionate. A good love letter takes risks, feels dangerous. Women, of course, were not allowed to take the initiative in these matters, but had they been, I think Charlotte Bronte would have written you a letter that was suitably impassioned.<\/p>\n \u2018I would have welcomed a letter of admiration from Lord Byron. He wrote brilliant love letters to everyone – girls, women, men, boys, Caroline Lamb, his half-sister, the sixty year old woman with whom he was having an affair when he was half her age, even his wife. I wouldn\u2019t want a letter from Robert Browning. He belongs to Mrs Browning. They were equally in love and it was a love that endured. But Byron was different. You could have a fling with Byron and move on. No harm done.\u2019<\/p>\n 2. Be thoughtful. <\/strong><\/p>\n According to Lady Antonia Fraser, looks count. \u2018How important is the actual physical appearance of the letter! A thousand years ago at the court of the Japanese Emperor, no gentleman would have dreamt of spending a night with a lady without sending round a letter of appreciation the morning after – a letter in which the thickness, size, design and colour of the paper all helped to indicate the emotional mood that the writer wished to suggest – the finishing touch being supplied by the branch or spray of blossom which it was de rigeur<\/em> to attach to it.\u2019<\/p>\n Margaret Drabble is confident that electronic communication won\u2019t supplant the traditional letter, because the letter is tangible and portable. \u2018You can carry a letter with you, hide it under the pillow, keep it in a shoe box with all the others as solid proof of love.\u2019 Antonia Fraser quotes Edith Wharton summing up the crucial moment of the letter\u2019s arrival: \u2018the first glance to see how many pages there are, the second to see how it ends, the breathless first reading, the slow lingering over each phrase and each word, the taking possession, the absorbing of them, one by one, and finally the choosing of the one that will be carried in one\u2019s thoughts all day, making an exquisite accompaniment to the dull prose of life.\u2019<\/p>\n 3. Be yourself. <\/strong><\/p>\n Drabble offers reassurance for those who feel they may not have a professional writer\u2019s facility with words. \u2018With a love letter, passion, feeling, sincerity are what count. Simplicity of expression can be a virtue. Good writers don\u2019t necessarily write exciting love letters. Fine words can stand in the way of true love. Bernard Shaw is a good example of a writer who managed to hide his feelings behind his words.\u2019<\/p>\n 4. Be prosaic.<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1857 Baudelaire sent a collection of his poetry to his mistress, Madame Sabatier, with a covering note: \u2018Farewell, dear lady. I kiss your hand as a sign of my utter devotion. All the verses contained between page 84 and page 105 are yours alone.\u2019 Shakespeare, Byron, the Brownings all wrote love letters in the form of poetry, but Drabble advises, \u2018Unless you are a poet, save your blushes and stick to prose.\u2019<\/p>\n (When I was an MP I remember a tender-hearted Tory MP (Mrs Thatcher\u2019s successor at Finchley, a married man, a father of three, and a lay preacher) who succumbed to the charms of his twenty-two year-old researcher and was forced to leave the government when samples of his love poetry found their way into the pages of the News of the World. Apparently there was no affair, simply a sentimental attachment. The Chief Whip was not to be mollified. \u2018Whether he\u2019s giving her one or not is immaterial,\u2019 he barked. \u2018What we can\u2019t have is any more of his atrocious poetry getting into the public domain. It\u2019s a disgrace to the administration.\u2019)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worldletterwritingday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worldletterwritingday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/WLWD-logo-transparant-background.png\"){kind=spacer}
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"