Stars from Kit Harington to Miriam Margolyes delighted the audience with intimate letter readings. But there was an irony to the evening
Let’s face it, the majority of the Letters Live audience is not really there for the event’s epistolary delights but to see Benedict Cumberbatch. He is a producer of this annual, critic-proof fundraiser, in which surprise celebrity guests read from a selection of personal correspondence sourced by Shaun Usher, editor of the best-selling anthologies Letters of Note. Cumberbatch read the evening’s most peculiar offering: an open letter from Andrew Forrester pleading to the world at large to keep the door locked while using the bathroom.
Letters Live, running since 2013, has just the faintest self-congratulatory whiff of a charity lunch, albeit with greater cultural kudos, glamorous speakers, and a global sensibility – the final reader on Thursday was the US presidential envoy for climate change John Kerry.
Its pleasures lie in the way it foregrounds the dying craft of the humble letter, yet literary merit isn’t always a priority: one letter about abortion rights and another from a gay daughter reckoning with her late mother’s homophobia felt included more for the messaging than for the elegance of their expression.
Yet it’s hard to quibble when you have Kit Harington reading a clumsily heartfelt marriage proposal from a 19th century Yorkshire farmer, which finished by cautioning that she should reply immediately, since he had another very nice girl waiting in the wings.