Our new King isn’t the only royal to have lost his rag over a leaky pen, as happened when he was signing a visitors’ book at Hillsborough Castle near Belfast. ‘Oh God, I hate this,’ King Charles said, before handing the pen to his wife, Camilla, Queen Consort. ‘I can’t bear this bloody thing… every stinking time,’ he added.

Tired of having to wash his hands after every warrant-signing session, the 10th-century Arab Egyptian ruler the Fatima caliph al-Mu’izz demanded his servants find him a writing utensil that wouldn’t leak everywhere. Courtiers set to work and soon a revolutionary new pen appeared that held ink in a reservoir. It allowed him to write at any angle without fear of leakages.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Leonardo da Vinci constructed his own version of the fountain pen, which he used for technical drawing. It meant he could avoid the tedium of dipping traditional quills into ink. In the 17th century, fountain pens became widely available across Europe and by the 1880s, they had largely replaced quills, although quills continued to be used in royal circles. In 1962, Parker pens were awarded the Royal Warrant by Queen Elizabeth II and became the official supplier of writing instruments to the Royal Household.

Rarely spotted today in classrooms, the fountain pen was once a staple of every schoolboy’s satchel. Pupils used to be marked down for scruffy handwriting. Stained fingers, inky shirtsleeves and blotted exercise books were considered a small price to pay for beautifully crafted calligraphy. The humble Biro, with its scratchy feel and unpredictable ink flow, was considered far inferior, even though it was less likely to leak. At my school, teachers would ridicule ‘Biro-boys’ whose parents were unable to afford more expensive Parker pens. Our English teacher took a dim view of those caught in possession of a Biro. He would order pupils found using one to write out ‘I will not use Biros in class’ 500 times… using a fountain pen, naturally.

Anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s will probably remember those creaky old Dickensian desks left over from an earlier era, with their shallow inkwells. Cartridge pens had long since removed the need for inkwells and by the time I went to school, they had become little more than storage units for squashed insects, belly-button fluff and other schoolboy detritus.

Despite being cleaner and less time-consuming than the quills they replaced, fountain pens have never been infallible, as King Charles III will attest. For those who remain wedded to their Pelikan Souveran, Namiki Yukari Royale or Kaweco fountain pen, there are ways to remove unsightly seepages when they happen. Try rubbing alcohol or hairspray into the mark, or if you have hand sanitiser left over from the pandemic spray some onto the stain before washing.

Why the King was offered a dodgy pen during such a solemn piece of royal protocol is anyone’s guess. The next time His Majesty must sign an important document, he might want to consider a ‘self-filling’ fountain pen with a screw-operated piston. It sucks ink in directly from the bottle, which removes the need for messy replacement cartridges, which do tend to leak. Or perhaps a Biro might be safer.