The return of the fountain pen

Every working day before I start pounding the keyboard of my ridiculously flashy 27-inch iMac, I perform a little ritual. I straighten the fountain pens I keep on my desk, and make sure they are fully inked.

Though I always have an eye for my next acquisition, I currently have just six pens, which are fuelled by four bottles of ink I keep next to them — Waterman black and serenity blue, Pelikan turquoise and Parker red. Three of the pens are Parkers, and my clear favourite is the greatest mass-produced pen of all time, the sleek Parker 51, with the distinctive hooded nib which first appeared in 1941, yet looks like the front end of a futuristic high-speed train.

I have a particular reason to love this pen as it belonged to the great W.F. Deedes. It was given to me by his daughter Lucy when he died in 2007, just as I was completing his authorised biography.

From images on the true-believing fan blogs devoted to the ‘51’, I date Bill’s model back to the late 1950s. This means he could not have landed with it at Normandy in 1944, when he won an MC. But it would have been with him through much of his political career and then his editorship of the Daily Telegraph. I like to picture him scribbling final edits on the statement he had typed out for John Profumo in 1963 flatly denying any sexual relationship with Christine Keeler. When my biography of Bill came out seven years ago and people asked me to sign a copy, it was to thrill to whip out the ‘51’ and explain its history to the buyer of the book.

But the fountain pen should not be regarded as a historical curiosity: global sales are actually increasing. Last Christmas Eve I encountered a scene of utter mayhem in the pen department of John Lewis on Oxford Street as shoppers fought over the remaining models.