History | Letters that Changed the World

Sometimes a phone call or email just doesn’t have the gravitas of a weighty letter that arrives with a thud on the doormat or is put into your hand. Here are a few letters from history that might just inspire you to put pen to paper, whether your aim is to change Government policy, declare your love or just to cheer someone’s day. 

Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn

What began as a mere love letter went on to change the shape of Britain for ever. When the infatuated Henry wrote to Anne Boleyn begging her to return his love in 1527, he was in fact still married to Catherine of Aragon. He was unlikely to have been the first or last to philander on the throne, but he was certainly the first to divorce and so this letter marks the beginning of the Reformation. It is signed “written with the hand of him who wishes he were yours”. It sounds like the words of a man who has entirely lost his head to love… sadly, that was precisely the case for poor Anne as it turned out. 

Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker

Darwin and his friend the botanist, Joseph Hooker exchanged some 1,400 letters with each other but one he wrote in January of 1844 stands out as a bit of a game-changer for science. He wrote: “At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable… I think I have found out (here’s presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends. - You will now groan and think to yourself ‘on what a man have I been wasting my time in writing to…” Fifteen years later, that letter became the basis of On The Origin of Species.

Siegfried Sassoon to his Commanding Officer

While recovering from injury in hospital, poet and soldier Sassoon met some pacifists and began to think more about the horrors he had witnessed on the battlefields. He wrote to his Commanding Officer to express his beliefs in a letter that became known as ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’. “I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it… I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.” A month later, the letter made it into the British newspapers and was read in Parliament to the horror of the upper classes, but by speaking out in letter form, Sassoon began to change the opinion of the public who ceased to see war as romantic and noble, and began to see the damage it caused.

Winston Churchill to Eliot Crawshay-Williams

When Churchill took power in May 1940, his private secretary, Crawshay-Williams, wrote to him entreating him to make a deal with the Nazis and end the war. He was not alone. Churchill was under enormous pressure to do a deal quickly. Had Churchill done as his secretary suggested, we might be living in a very different Europe now. Instead, he wrote back, by hand. The letter in its entirety read: “I am ashamed of you for writing such a letter. I return it to you - to burn and forget.” Short and to the point.

Marcus Rashford to Parliament

In June 2020 in the midst of the Covid pandemic, England footballer, Marcus Rashford, then 22 years old, wrote to ‘all MPs in Parliament’ to urge the Government to change its mind on its plans to stop school meals for children in poverty over the summer holidays. He wrote: “Understand: without the kindness and generosity of the community I had around me there wouldn’t be the Marcus Rashford you see today: a 22-year-old Black man lucky enough to make a career playing a game I love. My story to get here is all-too-familiar for families in England: my mum worked full-time, earning minimum wage to make sure we always had a good evening meal on the table. But it was not enough. The system was not built for families like mine to succeed, regardless of how hard my mum worked.” His campaign forced the Government into a u-turn and secured free meal vouchers for 1.3 million children in poverty across the country over school holidays. 

If this has left you inspired to pen an important letter of your own - or to simply drop a mate a line - you might like to read our feature, All the Letter, in our April issue, which is all about the joy of letter-writing.

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Lists | Famous Penfriends

In our June issue we celebrate the joy of penpal letters. Here are a few famous penpals whose correspondence we’d love to sneak a look at…

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis

Tolkien and Lewis were great mates and kept up the friendship via letters, too. Though both rather serious literary figures, apparently their letters were full of fun. 

Catherine The Great and Voltaire

Even rulers and philosophers need to unburden themselves sometimes. This pair corresponded for some 15 years. 

PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie

Showing it’s never too late to get a penpal, Wodehouse and Christie began their correspondence when he was 88 and she was 79. They were both huge fans of the other’s work. 

Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker

Darwin wrote to botanist, Hooker, for many years, even setting out his early idea that animal species ‘might not be immutable’ years before he wrote about evolution fully in On The Origin of Species. 

Henry James and Edith Wharton

These two great novelists corresponded for most of their adult lives, unburdening themselves about their personal troubles in letters (Wharton had an unhappy marriage and James suffered with depression). 

Vincent and Theo Van Gogh

The artist was a prolific letter writer, but the person he wrote to most frequently was his brother Theo, who kept them all carefully, and many of them can still be read today. Sadly, his less careful brother Vincent destroyed most of Theo’s letters back to him. There’s brotherly love for you.

Read more about penfriends, how to find them, what to write to them and more in our June issue, on sale now.

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Wish you were here

How a postcard spread a little sunshine eight decades late

We do love a postcard, and with so many holiday plans cancelled this year, we’re appreciating them even more. So we thought we’d bring some postal cheer with a story about a postcard that was also all the more enjoyable for being rather delayed. They do say the best things come to those who wait…

The postcard, featuring a black and white photo of a war memorial, was sent from Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex to a Mr and Mrs Richardson in East Dulwich, south London in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash and the same year John Logie Baird began his first experimental television transmissions from the BBC. It finally arrived at Lacon Road in 2008, the year of the bank bailout (for TV context the most-watched TV show that year was Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death).

The postcard reads simply:

Dear Auntie and Uncle,

Have arrived safely, got down about one o'clock, will write soon.

Love, May and Nel

But where did it get to in the intervening 79 years? Possibly it found its way accidentally into a nook or cranny somewhere at the Royal Mail and was rediscovered during renovations. The Royal Mail itself said at the time that it was more likely it had ‘re-entered the mail system’ all these years later so was perhaps misdelivered initially and then put in the post again. Mr and Mrs Richardson, whoever they might be, are presumably no longer with us but the current owner of the house held onto the postcard in case someone related to them ever wishes to claim it on their behalf. 

You can read more about the joy of postcards in our August issue, on sale now.

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Playlist | Songs about letters

DJ: Clare Gogerty Illutration: Shutterstock

Mister postman look and see. Is there a letter in your bag for me?

Listen at thesimplethings.com/blog/lettersplaylist

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Lost arts | writing a nice, newsy letter

Why writing and posting a letter is a forgotten pleasure

Do you remember the last time you received a letter from a friend? We bet you do, mainly because it’s such a rare thing these days. We bet you kept it, too, and reread it several times. We live in a world of texts, emails and (worse) texts that contain only emojis, which frankly, we think of as a crime against semi colons and brackets that ought to be punishable by law. 

So among all this, a letter you can unfold and hold, with actual ink, a recognisable hand, is something to treasure. 

We’ve resolved to write to friends more often, rather than sending those quick texts and emails, and are hoping to spread a little of that old-school joy of receiving a letter as well as enjoy the time spent on our own, penning it.

Here are a few tips on how to write a really good letter and enjoy every moment of it.

1. Make the writing of a letter an event. Take your pens and paper to a coffee shop or library, or find a corner of the house or garden to escape to, and make sure  you have a good hour free. You don’t have to finish the letter. Many of the best letters are written across a number of days with charming additions and edits marked on as you go. Lovely. 

2. Get out your posh pens and paper (and pencil case, too, if you like). Nice things make the experience even more pleasurable and a lovely pen and some nice heavy paper or an interesting card to write in will ensure you use your very best handwriting, too. 

3. Once you’ve assembled your tools and got yourself a cup of something steaming, you’re ready to write. Begin by setting out your reason for writing - you don’t want anyone panicking and suspecting there’s bad news to impart. Your reason for writing could be as simple as ‘I’ve decided to write more letters this year, and you’re my first victim!’

4. Draw up a mental list of things you want to tell your friend. Ask yourself what you’d tell her if you phoned her and she asked what you’d been up to. It’s easy to feel a bit self-conscious writing all this down without the usual conversational to and fro you have in a phone call or face-to-face conversation but go with it and it will start to feel more natural.

5. You’ll discover your natural written tone as you go but write in ‘your voice’. Use the expressions and words you would use in everyday conversation. Letters to friends should feel intimate but never formal. 

6. Don’t feel limited by the bounds of convention - little illustrations and diagrams will raise a smile and help as set the scene, whether it’s a comical drawing of the look on the bus driver’s face when you tried to pay using your library card, or a diagram of the parking wars battlefield raging on your street. Footnotes, asides and postscripts all add fun and texture to a letter, too. 

7. Don’t forget to include questions to your friend. This isn’t all about Me, Me, Me, remember. Let your imagination run a bit wild. It’s polite to ask after her health, job and family, but why not ask what book she’s reading now, whether she can recommend anything on TV, or simply which dead kings and queens she would invite to a fantasy dinner party. 

8. Sign off enthusiastically. Lots of love is better than ‘best wishes’. But a ‘Yours, from HMP Holloway is always funny (unless of course it’s true). If you really like the friend, why not slip a small bar of chocolate in before sealing the envelope? (Or a visitor’s pass?)

We were inspired to write this blog by a piece in our August ‘Pause’ issue, from The Way Home: Tales From a Life Without Technology by Mark Boyle (Oneworld). Mark, who is pictured above, decided to build a cabin on his smallholding and avoid technology (so no phone calls, emails or texts). He spends every Sunday evening writing replies to all the letters he receives during the week.

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