Alas, the love letter is no more "When I joined the library 12 years ago, the first archive I worked on was his," Dr Clarke explains. He was a sick man, incapacitated by crippling ill-health for most of his life, who poured out his heart in hundreds of love letters to the artist Emily Burton. They touched me deeply. In one letter, written in 1899, Bottomley finally declares his love for Emily: "I love you: I do not know how to say anything else!" He begs her to burn the letter if she cannot reciprocate his feelings. Luckily for us she could, and the declaration is preserved. One by one we made the public benches Sacred to us. What did we talk about? Many of the missives Clarke has chosen were written on the eve of battle, an especially poignant time for declaring love, or just before a reunion. As the poet Rupert Brooke put it when writing to the actress Cathleen Nesbitt, "my heart goes knocking when I think of (seeing you again) " and "I will kiss you till I kill you." Brooke had been immediately captivated by Cathleen after watching her on stage at the Savoy Theatre. He worshipped her great beauty and bombarded her with marriage proposals. On March 18, 1915, on his way to fight in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, he wrote with devastating prescience: "Oh my dear, Life is a very good thing. Thank God I met you. Be happy and be good. You have been good to me. Goodbye, dearest child, Rupert. He died from blood poisoning, aged 28, on April 23. A typed memo or email can never convey the same texture as a handwritten letter. "They contain layers of information and reveal much more about a person through the handwriting style, the shape it makes on the paper, as well as the signature itself, often with an array of doodles or drawings," says Clarke. It is not only that the impact of the words seems magnified when written by hand but letters have sometimes acquired smells (of coffee, perhaps, or tea) or been spattered by tears or mud, which adds enormously to their power. Clarke has noticed that more love letters appear to have been written by men. Historically, men would have been better educated and considered themselves the decision makers. It would not always have appeared seemly for a woman, whose role was to be the passive recipient of a man's love, to make amorous declarations. On the other hand, as Dr Clarke concludes: "Perhaps it is simply that women are better at preserving things." Anne Sebba and Dr Andrea Clarke will be in conversation at the British Library today. Call 01937 546060 for information. Love Letters" ed by Andrea Clarke (British Library) is available from Telegraph Books at £10 + £1.25 p&p.