100 Letters that Changed the World

Colin Salter is a prolific author of literary history. For Batsford he has written 100 Books that Changed the World, 100 Letters that Changed the World and 100 Speeches that Changed the World. He is the author of a biography of Mark Twain and a history of the books in one family’s three-hundred-year-old library. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, dog and bicycle.

The Spartans respond to a letter from Philip II of Macedon 14

Caesar’s murderers correspond to work out their next move 16

St. Paul guides the principles of Christianity through his letters 18

Tablets reveal details of life at the edge of the Roman Empire 20

Pliny the Younger describes the eruption at Pompeii to Tacitus 22

Romano-Britons plead for help from Rome as the empire falls 24

English barons try to flex their legal muscle after Magna Carta 26

Joan of Arc tells Henry VI she has God on her side 28

Leonardo da Vinci sets out his skills to the Duke of Milan 30

Henry VII writes to English nobles asking for their support 32

Columbus explains his discoveries to the king of Spain 34

Martin Luther tells his friend, ‘Let your sins be strong’ 36

Henry VIII writes a love letter to Anne Boleyn 38

De las Casas exposes Spain’s atrocities in the New World 40

Elizabeth I writes to Bloody Mary, begging for her life 42

Babington’s plot is revealed in coded letters to Mary, Queen of Scots 44

Philip II of Spain insists the Armada press on and attack England 46

Lord Monteagle gets a carefully worded warning … 48

Galileo explains the first sighting of the moons of Jupiter 50

Charles II reassures Parliament that they will be in control 52

The English nobility make Prince William of Orange an offer 54

Ben Franklin’s stolen mail reveals a political scandal 56

Abigail Adams tells husband John to ‘Remember the Ladies’ 58

George Washington employs his first spy in the Revolutionary War 60

Jefferson advises his nephew to question the existence of God 62

Mozart writes to his wife as he struggles to finish Requiem 64

Maria Reynolds tells Alexander Hamilton her husband has found out 66

Thomas Jefferson wants a French botanist to explore the northwest 68

After murdering Marat in his bath, Charlotte Corday writes in despair 70

On the eve of battle, Lord Nelson sends a message to his fleet 72

Napoleon informs Alexander I that France and Russia are at war 74

As machines replace farm labour, Captain Swing issues a threat 76

Charles Darwin gets an offer to become the naturalist on a surveying ship 78

The first postage stamp transforms the sending of letters 80

Friedrich ‘Fred’ Engels begins a lifelong correspondence with Karl ‘Moor’ Marx 82

Baudelaire writes a suicide letter to his mistress … and lives 84

Major Robert Anderson reports he has surrendered Fort Sumter 86

On the eve of battle, Sullivan Ballou writes to his wife, Sarah 88

Abraham Lincoln sends GeneralMcClellan an ultimatum 90

Abraham Lincoln spells out his Civil War priorities to Horace Greeley 92

William Banting wants the world to know how he lost weight 94

General Sherman reminds the citizens of Atlanta that war is hell 96

Vincent van Gogh writes an emotional letter to his brother, Theo 98

A Chicago Methodist training school launches a moneymaker 100

George Washington Williams sends a furious open letter to King Leopold II of Belgium 102

Alexander Graham Bell writes to Helen Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan 104

Beatrix Potter illustrates a letter to cheer up five-year-old Noel Moore 106

Pierre Curie sends Marie a letter begging her to come back and study 108

Oscar Wilde writes a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading Gaol 110

Writer Émile Zola accuses the French army of an anti-Semitic conspiracy 112

Orville and Wilbur Wright send news to their father, Bishop Milton Wright 114

John Muir lobbies Teddy Roosevelt about incursions into Yosemite 116

Lewis Wickes Hine reports to the National Child Labor Committee 118

Captain Scott: ‘We have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen’ 120

The very final letter from the Titanic that was never sent 122

Zimmermann offers Mexico the return of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico 124

Lord Stamfordham suggests a new name for the British royal family 126

Siegfried Sassoon sends an open letter to The Times 128

Adof Hitler’s first anti-Semitic writing, a letter sent to Adolf Gemlich 130

Master spy Guy Burgess gets a reference to join the BBC 132

Eleanor Roosevelt takes a stand against the Daughters of the American Revolution 134

Albert Einstein and Leo Szilárd warn President Franklin D. Roosevelt 136

Mussolini congratulates Hitler on his pact with Russia 138

Winston Churchill pens a blunt response to his private secretary 140

Roosevelt sends Churchill the poem that moved Abraham Lincoln 142

Virginia Woolf writes a final letter to her husband Leonard 144

Winston Churchill gets an urgent request from the codebreakers 146

Telegram reports that Pearl Harbor is under attack 148

General Nye sends General Alexander a misleading letter … by submarine 150

Oppenheimer gets the go-ahead to research an atomic bomb 152

J. Edgar Hoover receives ‘The Anonymous Letter’ 154

The shipwrecked JFK sends a vital message with two Solomon Islanders 156

Marshal Tito warns Stalin to stop sending assassination squads 158

Lillian Hellman sends a letter and a message to Senator McCarthy 160

William Borden identifies J. Robert Oppenheimer as a Soviet spy 162

Jackie Robinson tells Eisenhower his people are tired of waiting 164

Wallace Stegner composes as paean to the American wilderness 166

Nelson Mandela sends the South African prime minister an ultimatum 168

Decca sends a rejection letter to Beatles manager Brian Epstein 170

On the brink of war, Khrushchev sends a conciliatory letter to Kennedy 172

Kennedy replies to Khrushchev as tensions ease 174

Martin Luther King, Jr. sends a letter from Birmingham City Jail 176

Profumo’s resignation puts an end to British politics’ biggest sex scandal 178

Che Guevara tells Fidel Castro he wants to continue the fight 180

James McCord writes to Judge John Sirica after the Watergate trial 182

Ronald Wayne sells his 10 percent share in Apple for $800 184

Bill Gates writes an open letter to computer hobbyists who are ripping off his software 186

Michael Schumacher crosses out ‘the’ and becomes World Champion 188

Boris Yeltsin admits running Russia was tougher than he expected 190

Sharron Watkins sends a letter criticizing Enron’s dubious accounting 192

Dr. David Kelly admits he was the source for critical BBC report 194

Bobby Henderson asks Kansas to acknowledge the Spaghetti Monster 196

Chelsea Manning writes to Wikileaks with a data dump 198

Astronauts lament America’s lack of a space delivery system 200

Pussy Riot singer trades philosophies with Slavoj Zizek 202

Edward Snowden has a shocking revelation for the German press 204

The whistleblowers appeal to future whistleblowers 206

Letters – the next investment boom to follow art? 208

Women in the entertainment industry demand change 210

Greta Thunberg reads a letter to the Indian prime minister 212

Addendum: Helen Keller writes to Alexander Graham Bell 214

Index 221