Comedian Andy Hamilton is publishing a 349-page novel written entirely by HAND over two years

A comedian has used a pen to write all 349 pages of his new novel, in a bid to save handwriting. 

Andy Hamilton, who is best known for creating the TV series Outnumbered, spent two years writing the book Longhand. 

Longhand is due to be released on Thursday September 3 and is handwritten in Hamilton’s neat italics, The Sunday Times reported.  

Including the revisions, Hamilton, 66, estimates he handwrote 3,000 pages and got through 43 Berol Italic pens. 

Hamilton’s handwriting is neat and easy-to-read with some crossings-out on some pages. 

He said that, although he is right-handed, he writes with his left hand and uses his right hand as a guide after losing his right thumb during childhood. 

Hamilton told The Times: ‘This feels like the moment when we’re waving goodbye to handwriting. 

‘The age of global digitalness is fully upon us. And I think that if handwriting does disappear, it will be a loss – a loss of intimacy.’ 

The novel is about a character called Malcolm George Galbraith who is forced to leave the woman he loves behind and writes her a handwritten note to explain why. 

In this note, he starts from the beginning and tells her the whole story of his life, with the different names he has gone by and the other places he has lived.  

Hamilton said one of the difficulties was not knowing how many words he had written, as he didn’t have the convenience of having a digital word counter.  

The printing press is a machine which transfers text and images to another media with ink.  

The printing press was first mechanised in Europe and its earliest mention was in a lawsuit in Strasbourg in 1439, according to Britannica, which revealed the construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates.