Jonathan Sawday

Letter

A Fly’s Footfall

24 September 2026

The word ‘microphone’ has been the ‘standard term for a certain kind of auditory device since at least 1684’, David Trotter writes. We can go even further back. Perhaps the first microphone to have been imagined (if not constructed) can be found in a now forgotten academic comedy, Albumazar by Thomas Tomkis, performed at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1614. The device is named...

Letter

Experimental Network

4 January 2024

James Meek’s account of the technologies that have enabled companies like Netflix to ‘drown the world in small-screen entertainment’ omits a crucial social and technological shift concealed by the term ‘small screen’ (LRB, 4 January). Growing up in Britain in the 1960s, I watched black and white TV on a screen that was indeed very small by today’s standards....

Fill in the Blanks: On Army Forms

Jonathan Sawday, 29 June 2023

In How to be Topp (1954), Nigel Molesworth unveils ‘the Molesworth Self-Adjusting Thank-you Letter’. The sender is instructed to strike out the words which don’t apply, before thanking the present-buyer for the

Train. Tractor. germ gun. kite.delicious present. sweets.Space pistol. Toy socks.

The letter ends with a blank space to be filled in with a date to remind the...

A. 2042 was designed to be sent to family or friends at home by those on active service. It began by warning that ‘nothing is to be written on this side’ other than the sender’s signature and the date, and ‘if anything else is added the post card will be destroyed.’ It then offered a series of phrases, each of which could be deleted, to create a rudimentary narrative. The opening words, ‘I am quite well,’ could be crossed out or supplemented with more troubling news.

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