The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters

Recently I ordered 3 books from Amazon's used book market: The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters. They came into 3 volumes: from 1955-57, 58-59, and 60-62. It was quite a chance event that I came to know about them.

To be honest, I had always thought that reading others' letters wouldn't add too much to one's intellect. The other day I was reading the Daily Telegraph, one of the columnists there was lamenting that nowadays, pupils have lost their interest, and ability, to write decent English. The now generation can only type text messages, using acronyms, weird short-forms consisting of symbols and completely lacking style. He was very concerned that the art of writing is fading fast among the now generation, and that it seems nobody is willing to write letters anymore. At the end of his essay, he recalled how much he enjoyed the writing style of Evelyn Waugh's letters in the book The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, saying that it's an absolute joy to read; and in passing he also mentioned the Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters, which the columnist considered the only possible collection of personal correspondence that ever got printed in 3 volumes.

I was intrigued and thus I searched on the Amazon.co booklist. Surprise, surprise. There were some second-hand books available at incredibly low prices. The books were in very good condition, and in fact, the prices were even cheaper than the post & postage!

So here they are: 3 chunky volumes of the Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters and a comparble volume of Evelyn Waugh's letters. I would have a lot of reading materials before I go to bed every night from now on.

P.S. I only came to know recently that "Evelyn" could be a male's name! How naiive I'd been!