Reading letters addressed to other people is like listening in to other people's conversations - not good manners and not a good idea. Remember what happens to Lucy in The Voyage of the Dawntreader? Yet for thousands of years people have been saving letters and leaving them behind for later generations to read. We would know a great deal less about the past if we didn't have letters as evidence. One thing we can learn from all those documents is that human nature doesn't change. A recently published book, called 'More Letters of Note' includes an angry letter from a copper merchant who felt disrespected in 1750BC and a delightful one to the television show Blue Peter, from a nine-year-old boy who grew up to become a doctor. The scrap of hard to read writing above is from The Paston Letters, a fascinating collection of letters from various members of the same family spanning most of the fifteenth century.
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