The Power of the Pen

On a visit to her local flea market in Florence, Sarah Dunant stumbles across a love letter. The date: November 1918. There's the challenge of the Italian of course....but the biggest hurdle, she says, was the handwriting. It was "as if a conscientious ant had climbed out of the ink pot and then wound its way across every millimetre of the page".

Admiring the tiny handwriting with hardly any space between the lines, Sarah reflects on the modern day demise of handwriting.

"Regimented key strokes in various type fonts" are no substitute, she argues, for the beauty and emotion contained in handwriting.

Producer: Adele Armstrong.