Gordon Brown: Sorry if you can’t read my handwriting

Gordon Brown today apologised for his poor handwriting and for misspelling the name of a dead soldier in a letter to the young man's mother.

His words, which were unusually candid and humble, came after he was accused of showing disrespect in the handwritten letter of condolences to the family of a Grenadier Guardsman. Jamie Janes, 20, died in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan on 5 October.

"I take very seriously my responsibility to the bereaved," the Prime Minister began in the statement released this afternoon by No 10. "Every time I write a letter to mothers and fathers and partners who have suffered bereavement to express my sincere condolences, it is a moment of personal sadness to me. And I am in awe of the bravery and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces. I send a handwritten letter to every family and I often write to more than one member of the family."

Mr Brown, who was criticised ferociously by Guardsman Janes' mother, Jacqui, went on: "I have telephoned Jacqui Janes to apologise for any unintended mistake in the letter. To all other families whom I have written to, I can only apologise if my handwriting is difficult to read. I have at all times acted in good faith seeking to do the right thing. I do not think anyone will believe that I write letters with any intent to cause offence."

It is the first time that Mr Brown has publicly acknowledged the poor state of his handwriting, which is found shocking by some recipients of letters but is due to his partial blindness. The letter to Mrs Janes, in his characteristic scrawl using a thick-tipped pen to make the letters more visible, appeared to misspell the family name as "James". In addition, Jamie's name appeared to have been written wrongly and scruffily corrected.

The statement came after a morning of mounting political pressure on Mr Brown. It began with Mrs Janes giving her story to the Sun, which alleged there were 20 mistakes in the letter. Downing Street rejected that, saying some alleged errors were simply down to Mr Brown's "unique" style of handwriting.

Mrs Janes, 47, said: "The very least I would expect from Gordon Brown is to get his name right. The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished. It's just disrespectful."

Mr Brown telephoned Mrs Janes last night to apologise personally — but the attempt to mollify her backfired when his spokesman today seemed unwilling to acknowledge he had made mistakes. The spokesman said he was deeply sorry "for the way she [the mother] feels" about the error-strewn letter — a form of words that critics called a non-apology.

"The hand-written letter clearly contains mistakes on the basis that the person who received it has misread those words," his spokesman went on. Critics said No 10 appeared to be blaming Mrs Janes for "misreading" the letter.

The spokesman went on: "Some people's handwriting is easier to read than others. Everyone acknowledges that the Prime Minister's handwriting is of a particular style. That is not a criticism of the Prime Minister."

No 10 officials say such mistakes are impossible to avoid and they stressed that Mr Brown is painstaking about writing handwritten letters rather than get officials to draft them and type them on his behalf.

Lesley Hicks, whose 26-year-old son Captain David Hicks died leading his troops in Afghanistan in August 2007, said the letters sent out to grieving families should be "perfect".

Mrs Hicks, 60, and her husband Alun received a letter from Gordon Brown after their son, of the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, died after refusing morphine so he could lead 50 men in a counter-offensive against a rocket position.

Mrs Hicks, from Finchampstead, Surrey, said: "It is a personal letter and any handwriting is personal. I can understand how people feel. Mistakes are made and they should not be. I don't think it (getting a name wrong) is necessarily the Prime Minister's fault. It is his aide. People are not careful enough."