Letters to David\nIrving on this Website

Unless\ncorrespondents ask us not to, this Website\nwill post selected letters that it\nreceives, and invite open\ndebate.

Douglas\nRodger\nknows something, Friday, September 9, 2005, about\nthe date ballpoint pens came into general\nuse

Ballpoint\npens and Anne Frank

I came across the discussion re.\nthe\nAnne Frank diary and the\ndate when ballpoint pens might have been available,\nand remembered coming across references to Biros in\nGeorge Orwell‘s correspondence (in The\nComplete Works of George Orwell).

The first mention comes in February 1946, when\nOrwell wrote to David Low the London\nbooksellers ordering a Biro. They replied that they\ndid not have one in stock, but would supply one\nwhen they did.

However, in a letter to a friend dated March 15,\n1946, Orwell states ‘I have at last got one of\nthose pens that don’t have any ink in them’ – which\nI think must be a Biro – and his next reference to\nBiros comes in a letter dated the 12th of December\n1947, when he is asking a friend to purchase a Biro\nfor him, stating that his has run out and is being\nrefilled, and that he expects the price of the pen\nto be about £3.

I realise that the discussion dates from several\nyears ago, and thus may be of little interest now,\nbut thought that I would pass this on.

Douglas\nRodger

\nAlasdair Spark\ncontributes his two ha’porth on Anne Frank’s\ncontroversial use of ballpoint pens in writing\nher diary | a\nreader looks at Anne’s curiously varied\nhandwriting

David\nIrving replies:

I have received several\nletters over the last two years about the date that\nballpoint pens (invented by the Hungarian, Biro)\nfirst came into general use. A very few were used\nin 1944Â (Sir William Stephenson wrote\nat least one letter late that year to Lord\nBeaverbrook in ballpoint pen; it is in the\nBeaverbrook Papers). Anne Frank would not\nhowever have had access to one before she died of\ntyphus in 1945.

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\nOur\ndossier on the Anne Frank diaries

\nAlasdair Spark\ncontributes his two ha’porth on Anne Frank’s\ncontroversial use of ballpoint pens in writing\nher diary

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