A basket, a bargain, and a book worth keeping

I’ve always been weirdly fascinated by price fluctuations. Maybe it’s the economics junkie in me, or maybe I just like a good deal—but when I see a brand-new book being sold for £1 by a high-street bookshop, my brain goes into overdrive. Why? How? Who decided this book, pristine and untouched, was worth less than a cup of coffee?

So there I was, rummaging through WHSmith’s clearance basket, pretending I wasn’t about to walk out with five books I didn’t plan on buying. And that’s when I saw it: Letters of Note, compiled by Shaun Usher. The subtitle alone was irresistible—Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience. That’s all I needed. Into the bag it went, and home it came.

Letters that make you stop and think

I’ve not read it all yet but skimmed through it and stopped to read a letter here and there. This book isn’t just a collection of letters; it’s a window into moments of raw humanity. Some letters are profound, others heartbreakingly ordinary, and a few are delightfully absurd.

One of my favourites is a response from NASA to a nun who questioned the purpose of space exploration. You can almost hear the patient sigh in the reply—an eloquent yet firm justification of why looking beyond our world matters. Then there’s Mark Twain’s cheeky letter to a snake oil salesman, dripping with sarcasm as he pretends to be delighted by the supposed health benefits of a dubious tonic. And let’s not forget the letter from Queen Elizabeth II to President Eisenhower, sharing her personal scone recipe.

It’s an odd mix, but that’s the beauty of it. Every page brings a new voice, a new perspective, a different time and place, yet all of them feel oddly relevant.

Some letters are painfully intimate, like Virginia Woolf’s haunting farewell to her husband before her suicide. Others capture history in the making, like Gandhi’s letter to Hitler, a plea for peace that we know went unanswered. And then there are the downright hilarious ones—like a letter to The Times from Lieutenant Colonel Alfred D. Wintle, who explained that he had written a long letter but decided to throw it away, offering up a brief note instead.

The magic of seeing the ink

One of the best things about Letters of Note is that many of the letters are reproduced as scanned originals. You’re not just reading the words—you’re seeing the creases, the smudges, the typewritten quirks, the hurried scribbles in the margins. There’s something almost sacred about it, like stepping into history rather than just reading about it.

Some of these letters look rushed, some are beautifully handwritten, and some are simply practical—just words on paper, meant for a single pair of eyes. But here they are, decades or even centuries later, speaking to us in ways their senders never anticipated. There’s something oddly comforting about that, as if we’re momentary guests in their world.

This isn’t a coffee table book in the traditional sense—it’s not oversized or glossy—but it demands to be left somewhere within arm’s reach. It’s the kind of book you pick up randomly, read a letter or two, and then find yourself an hour later deep in someone else’s world, wondering how you got there.

Worth more than a pound

Sure, it’s a book that’s more than 10 years old, and I’m sure some manager decided it’s better to sell off unsold copies for a symbolic price rather than send them to the recycling centre, but if I shut off the part of my brain that insists on finding logic in everything, I still can’t understand why Letters of Note was sitting in that bargain bin. All I know is that it’s now one of those books I’ll never lend out (because let’s be honest, people never return books). It’s too good, too full of those little moments that make you pause, smile, or even tear up.

Reading these letters reminds me that no matter how different our lives may be—across time, geography, or circumstance—our emotions remain the same. Joy, grief, humour, frustration, love. They all spill onto the pages in messy, human ways.

So if you ever see this book—whether for £1 or full price—grab it. It deserves a wider audience, just like the letters inside it.