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- Article explaining the complexities involved in sending and receiving letters which puts into context the necessity and brilliance of Lymond's "spy" network and why letters took so long to arrive - if they arrived at all. The brief but very informative article mentions the period of the HON and TLC.
- "The British Post Office as we know it today only came into being in 1660 as the General Letter Office. Prior to that, the Royal Mail was literally that, the private courier service of the sovereign. If the general public wanted to send a letter, it was necessary to find a trustworthy person going in roughly the right direction, pay him an agreed some to ensure that it was delivered and hope that he did not pocket the money and destroy the letter....The greatest postal network in Medieval Europe was operated by the Princes of Thum und Taxis, who gained a postal monopoly over all mail between Vienna and all the Hapsburg possessions in the Holy Roman Empire. The Thum und Taxis mail system distributed mail from the British posts mentioned above and similar systems all over Europe and would have been very familiar to, and used by, many of the characters in the books of Dorothy Dunnett."
- Len Stanway - Fellow Royal Philatelic Society of London.
- Dorothy Dunnett
- Filippo Corsini
- Princes of Thum und Taxis
- Jeanetto de Tassis
- Emperor Frederick ID
- Bergamo in Lombardy
- Ruggiano
- St. Augustine in his study. from his Soliloquii. Florence 1491.
- Efficiency of the Roman approach to communications.
- British merchants launched their Merchant Adventurers' Post in the 1580s.
