James Ellroy's partner writes - and other surprise responses

Today is press day at the TLS - and as usual one of the Editor's greatest treats is reading the final proofs of the letters page. Anyone curious to know the family connection between a well known female Radio One broadcaster and the author of the French 1913 classic, Le Grand Meaulnes, should read this week's issue.

It is sometimes said by carpers that the on-line comments on newspaper websites struggle to match the standard of those in print. So let me also draw attention to the surprising (and, to use old press language, exclusive) comments by Erika Schickel, the partner of the American writer James Ellroy, on our review of Ellroy's The Hilliker Curse.

See too the moving responses to William Dalrymple's review of the letters of Bruce Chatwin.

And although Elaine Showalter's provocative reading of James Ellroy has been justly popular, its attraction has been far exceeded among on-line readers by Robert Pott's lapidary account of J.H.Prynne and the notoriously difficult poets of the Cambridge school.