Our new King isn’t the only royal to have lost his rag over a leaky pen, as happened when he was signing a visitors’ book at Hillsborough Castle near Belfast. ‘Oh God, I hate this,’ King Charles said, before handing the pen to his wife, Camilla, Queen Consort. ‘I can’t bear this bloody thing… every stinking time,’ he added.
Tired of having to wash his hands after every warrant-signing session, the 10th-century Arab Egyptian ruler the Fatima caliph al-Mu’izz demanded his servants find him a writing utensil that wouldn’t leak everywhere. Courtiers set to work and soon a revolutionary new pen appeared that held ink in a reservoir. It allowed him to write at any angle without fear of leakages.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Leonardo da Vinci constructed his own version of the fountain pen, which he used for technical drawing.
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