Anyone who has tried writing with the edged brush knows that it behaves very differently from an edged pen. If you've ever watched Tom Kemp wield the brush, writing 5 inch letters in water on a blackboard, or even more memorably, 6 foot letters with a pasting brush on lining paper taped to a wall at a CLAS Festival, you will be half way to wanting this book already.

This edged brush is a versatile tool. You can use it on many surfaces you could never tackle with a pen. It handles very differently, so you can twist it the way a pen just can't go. It's flexible (a trifle unnerving at first, if you're used to a sturdy edge against the writing surface), which means it can be manipulated to make the most incredible serifs as well as all the fiddly bits like both ends of an S without showing the joins.

And yet it's nothing like the sign-writer's method, and nor is it a 'filling-in' technique such as many calligraphers use for painted letters on fabric or wood. No, it's much more immediate, definitely writing, not painting. Amazingly, the edged brush is not commonly used by calligraphers, but Tom aims to change all that with this book.

The book assumes absolutely no prior knowledge, and takes the reader carefully through every stage, including preparing the work surface, ruling lines, and 22 pages of exercises to show what the brush can do. When you've tried them all, you'll be amazed at the power of this tool. Tom writes enthusiastically and as if he is at your elbow, anticipating your difficulties and discoveries.

When you feel confident with handling the brush, the next stage is to write with it. Here Tom shows every nuance of brush twist and turn to make all the letters so admired from Rome's famous example on the Trajan Column. He starts with the letter I, so you can master the secrets of those serifs. Every stroke is drawn in detail, along with what not to do and why. All the letters are dealt with in the same painstaking detail, with additional thoughts later in the book

There is discussion on how P is not R without a tail, how C's posture is protected from gravity, why N is wider than we do it with a pen, opening the mind to think about the logic of visual stability.

All of the above represents the results of many years of Tom's research, and might be considered sufficient for one manual. However, he has always maintained that we should develop onwards, so the last section of the book covers how to move on from the perfect Trajan letter. The same thorough detail is shown here. It starts with modest changes - supposing you want to write P larger, but use the same brush. There are intellectual fascinations to be discovered here. If you first do a photocopied enlargement, that will give you the scaled-up shape including extra width as if a bigger brush had been used. If you traced over this for your slim-line version, would you follow the inside edge? The outside edge? The centre? A combination? If it were a very slimline version, it would be a 'skeleton' letter, highlighting confusions of exactly where inside the letter a skeleton should go.

From modest changes we move to compressing letters, speeding up, developing a rhythm, writing caps with fewer serifs. Finally we take a look at lower case alphabets, and realise they have evolved mainly through the medium of the edged pen, with little manipulation. Tom presents his suggestions, including some sample alphabets for us to develop.

This is a thorough study of edged brush writing, drawing on respected researchers who have gone before, Edward Catich (The Origin of the Serif) and Edward Johnston (Writing & Illuminating & Lettering) among them. Tom Kemp presents his teaching and understanding in great depth, revealing new insights both for the tool and the Trajan letterforms, and encouraging us to develop onwards.

By putting it all down in these 246 pages of clear instruction, he has the potential to reach many more people than he could possibly teach in his lifetime. Buy it, you need it!