Melanie Cooper

Take a Letter, Take Lots

We wanted to write some heavy stuff to a recalcitrant agent in New York, and MELANIE COOPER, an extremely charming Hampshire girl, offered her service as a shorthand-typist.

So, we dictated our heavy epistle and then we took a break. It was then we realised what unimaginative eggheads we'd be if we let it go at that. Melanie would go home.

"Take lots more,” we said, and we dictated letters to almost everyone we were on correspondence terms with, and any amount of people got letters concerning subjects they didn't know a thing about.

But it was a rainy afternoon and it was an exhilarating way of seeing it through.