Book review: The Missing Ink, By Philip Hensher

Those who deny that the portable screen age is not anathema to the handwriting habit have only to remember Gordon Brown's scrawl in a letter of condolence to a dead soldier's mother.

Hensher's entertaining and erudite campaign to bring handwriting back from the brink includes this ignominous illustration of how it is still, and always will be, important.

Part cultural analysis, part social history, this quirky and readable book takes in everything from the battle of the scripts in Nazi Germany to graphology, combining impish humour with learning and an eloquent turn of phrase.