THE pen is like the needle of a record player held in one’s hand,’ Donald Jackson, calligrapher and scribe to the late Elizabeth II, once observed. ‘As it moves across the paper, it releases the music of our innermost selves.’ If Mr Jackson is correct, for many of us the tune playing within our subconscious must sound like a skeleton break-dancing in a biscuit tin. Handwriting is much like the human foot—those who can look down upon either with pride are a rare breed indeed.
Good penmanship has long been viewed as the sign of a well-organised mind. Mahatma Gandhi declared that a poor hand is ‘the sign of an imperfect
