Last week I received an e-mail which had been forwarded by a friend. It was an eye-witness account of the effect of the Tsunami on one Thai beach. I thought I had read enough about the disaster, but the narrative was gripping and upsetting by turns, and because it arrived by mail complete with typos and wonky formatting, all the more proximate.
At the weekend I saw Journey's End, the famous first world war play about trench life now coming to the end of its West End run. A letter plays a central role in the drama (letters were of course a mental lifeline home from the front), and it reminded me how we have lost the art of letter writing but at its best e-mail has re-invented the form, adding viral distribution along the way.