If you are looking for inspiration this Valentine's Day then you may want to check out Andrea Clarke's new book Love Letters: 2,000 Years of Romance. This new book from the British Library explores love letters from ancient Egypt to the present day. What makes the book so unique is that it reproduces the actual letters in the author's own hand. Included are letters penned by Henry VIII, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Admiral Nelson and Oscar Wilde among others.

This week on my drive to work I listened to a reading from "Just My Type" by Simon Garfield on Radio 4's Book of the Week show. If you haven't heard of the book or missed the show, you can still hear it on the BBC iPlayer service.

It is a fascinating book, described by the New York Times as "a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things."

The show I listened to was all the use of type in the last American election and specifically about Obama's use of Gothan "a type consciously chose to suggest forward thinking without frightening the horses". As I read the book I was continually amazed at the unconscious power and persuasion typestyles have on our every day life.

The book is out in paperback and would make an excellent stocking stuffer.

I have loved Gillian Welsh's music since the day I heard her first promotional CD back in April 1996. She has just released a new album entitled The Harrow and the Harvest which comes (in the US only) with a unique letterpressed CD cover. The video is a good introduction to both letterpress printing and the music of Gillian Welsh and her long time partner David Rawlings. Hope you enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Mz_imdISk