The Bruce and Jan Show

Fifty years ago, when people communicated on paper delivered by hand, her brother’s letters from far-off England would be eagerly opened and avidly read by the whole family back in Auckland.

Often flowing over half a dozen pages or more, Bruce’s back-slanted penmanship was casual, his phrasing newsy and chatty. Sometimes this trained engineer would clarify a point with a sketch: his diagnosis of carburetor trouble on a racing engine, or how a surgeon proposed to implant a “steel ball-ended thing” to repair his hip, damaged by Perthes Disease in his youth.