What does your handwriting say about you?

In most of the world, the use of graphology in recruitment is marginal. But in France - despite an appreciable decline of writing in recent years caused by computers - the technique is proving remarkably resilient.

Catherine Bottiau is one of France's leading graphologists. She analyses hand-writing mainly for corporate clients seeking advice about prospective employees.

It is a complex technique involving study of a range of parameters, including size of letters, angles, slopes, shapes, links, spaces, order, pen pressure and variance from educational norm.

She offered our correspondent Hugh Schofield a consultation.