Helen McCrory

I read these out loud quite often. The letters are gathered from such a diverse range of people, from Steve Martin to Napoleon, and David Bowie to Mary, Queen of Scots—in this case on the night of her execution. There are love letters, letters of state, there’s a particularly funny one from a British ambassador to Moscow. They are tiny chinks of light into all these different lives, from Charlie Chaplin to Hitler. Each letter is reproduced as a facsimile of the original.