A RAY of hope dropped through my letterbox last Saturday which warmed my heart far more than the welcome sunshine that blessed the Island the following day.

As a 21st-century technophobic equivalent of an anti-industrial revolution Luddite, I have long lamented the demise of the art of letter writing, so receiving a hand-written missive was a delight.

Just ten years ago I could expect Christmas cards from family and friends to contain letters amounting to dozens; last year I received just four. Considering that I had sent in the region of two dozen letters I was, as you can imagine, somewhat disappointed.

The postcode on the hand-addressed envelope that lay on the doormat last Saturday alerted me to the identity of the sender and, having opened the envelope to find a rare real letter, I saved it for later. After all, the writer – one-half of a delightful couple from Essex whom I had met on holiday ten years ago – had taken the trouble to fill two sheets of A4 and undertaken a trip to post it, so her efforts deserved my undivided attention.

My friend began with: ‘Always look forward to receiving your letter at Christmas.’ She then went on to fill the sheets of paper with everyday news about her family and the escapades of her crazy little dog, Harry, and to impart the sad news that she was about to invest in computer: ‘So we can email instead of waiting till next Christmas.’

My heart sank. Though I welcome the opportunity to e-converse on a regular basis, how I shall miss the annual festive rite of letter exchange.

Ten years ago the world of e-communications was a mystery to most, and though I held out far longer than my contemporaries, I eventually succumbed. To be perfectly honest, I have embraced this brave new world with gusto, relishing the opportunity to keep in touch with friends both across the globe and very close to home. The result is smaller phone bills, which is a bonus, but the downside is that I rarely put pen to paper.

A decade past and those special Christmas letters to relatives and friends would have been hand-written, composed especially for the recipient and written with care, using a trusty fountain pen – a gift from a grandparent when I started secondary school – and repeatedly filled with ink as the nib consumed page after page of writing paper.

Now, come December, those letters take a round-robin format, are composed on a screen and are churned out in print form on bog-standard paper.

In harping on sanctimoniously about the demise of hand letter-writing, I am as guilty as the next person in putting the pen, ink and writing paper industries out of business.

How dull the world will be when the last hand-written letter is composed and fountain pens run dry. Surely that day will never come; there will always be occasions where nothing else but a hand-written letter is able to show that the writer cares enough to find the time to put pen to paper.

Letters are an important part of our history and those penned by significant and influential performers on the world’s stage provide fascinating insights into major events.

World leaders, great thinkers, royalty, poets and politicians have all conversed by letter. The personal correspondence between Queen Victoria and her many relatives in the royal families of Europe, Neville Chamberlain’s vain attempts to persuade Hitler from his course of world domination, and more recently Princess Diana’s letters to her in-laws as her marriage disintegrated are all primary source documents that add a human dimension to events of international importance.

An email, printed out in hard copy or stored somewhere in the ether, somehow just doesn’t have the same impact. The history student and researcher can make a direct link to the letter writer by holding the pieces of paper, whereas an email can never provide that same physical connection.

Would Napoleon have won Josephine’s heart with an email? Probably not. More so if he had inadvertently clicked on the wrong recipient in his e-address book! Would the world understand the depth of Elizabeth Barrett’s love for Robert Browning if they had not kept the romantic love letters that passed between them?

In embracing communication by email, we can still take the time to compose the message, but on the screen rather than a page. There is nothing worse than receiving a message that takes the annoyingly abbreviated form of a mobile text or being invited to share a communication with the entire world on Facebook. The joy of friendships and family relationships is the intimate nature of confidences and the trust between two people which are not for broadcasting in the public realm.

It is not just physical letters and the art of letter writing that is under threat. Booklovers beware! The emergence of e-books is being taken as a sign that the days of the printed word and bookshops are numbered.

There are those who take the argument for saving the planet to the extreme by advocating that books are environmentally unfriendly because they contribute to climate change.

One of those studies that never fails to annoy – and is proof that some academics should really get our more – was undertaken in America in 2003. It found that printed books took three times more raw material and 78 times more water to produce that the e-book equivalent. Next time it snows and Jersey grinds to a halt, I’ll curse William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens for being such prolific and popular writers.

The human race already spends far too much time stuck in front of a computer screen without having to resort to virtual books for a little rest and relaxation.
The pleasure of losing oneself in a novel under the shade of a tree on a sunny day, whiling away long train or plane journeys, or at bedtime, loses its appeal if the pages can be only be turned by clicking the return button instead of flicking the real page of a book resting in one’s lap.

Among the gifts I received last Christmas was a decorative bookmark. How long before such delightful items become, like so many things we take for granted, obsolete?