Like everybody else, Humpty included, I put down the daily newspaper and wash my hands. Why? It’s the ink.
The story of ink is the story of soot. Ever since the Egyptians and the Chinese took up writing we have been involved with ink. Without ink Kipling’s six honest serving-men would have been out of a job. Without ink Northcliffe’s newspaper revolution would never have reached newly literate Englishmen. Without ink the Doomsday Book would have been dead in the water. Without ink Herbert Ingram (my local hero) would never have brought the ‘Illustrated London News’ into being.
But ink is dirty stuff. Lamp-black is the polite term for the soot that makes ink black. And scrapings from a chimney are not the kind of thing we expect to form the basis of a civilisation. But so it was. It’s one of the things we don’t talk about just as we don’t talk about our habit of killing animals to put meat on the table. Even so at least two major religions have regularised our carnivorous instincts. Ink may be a great unmentionable but it has played a significant part in the story of Christianity. When printing came to this country, ink was first put to use to see Chaucer and then – oddly – King Arthur and the Round Table -- into print. But hard on the heels of those two celebrities came a printed Bible. On the Continent Gutenberg had already made a priority of the Bible. It was rather late in the day that the first printed Bible in English – Coverdale’s version – came into being.
But literacy is also required. Medieval worshippers may have learned their Christianity from wall-paintings and stained-glass windows as much as from their parsons (whose acquaintance with the three Rs was mostly rudimentary). Against that background Tyndale’s aspiration to help a plough-boy to know more of the Scriptures than a scholar has been influential since the stormy days of the Reformation. Literacy has marched alongside Christianity.
For the last 500 years the dirty stuff, ink, has been called into service for one version of the Bible after another. True, the dirty stuff was shown the door when fountain-pen ink such as Quink – not to mention the ball-point – came on stream. But the title deeds of the Christian faith are not exempt from the helter-skelter of modern technology. The Bible in English can be read without any hand-washing afterwards. In digital form it is above such hygienic requirements. The end of ink does not mean the end of the Scriptures. They merely become less sooty.
As usual, Humpty has the last word. 'All very well,' he said, 'but if newsprint goes out of business, what shall we wrap our fish and chips in?' I thought it best to remain silent.
NEW MERCY SHIP
Under construction is the 37,000 ton mercy ship Global Mercy. The second ship of the fleet, it will bring free life-changing surgery to worldwide coastal communities. The ship will have six operation rooms, accommodation for 600 volunteers and a 682-seat auditorium. The Mercy Ships organisation has served 2.8m people in 55 countries. It has a new-style magazine available from 12 Meadway Court, Stevenage SG12EF
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