Readers of the Daily Telegraph will be fondly aware of the combination of wistful nostalgia & appalled outrage that characterises its letters page. But what of all the letters that were just slightly too extreme, too off the wall, too politically incorrect, or just too barking mad, to make it to publication?
Iain writes feature articles for a range of publications, The Daily Telegraph in particular. Until recently, he also wrote a regular column called Loose Ends in Saturday's Guardian. He has taken part in a number of radio shows, including BBC Radio 4's Today programme and You and Yours.
His father is a GP and his mother is a surgeon. He has one elder brother. He went to Eton from 1993-98. Iain graduated from Cambridge University in 2003 with a first class degree in History. He worked for a year in Westminster - at Vote 2004 and the private office of Michael Howard - before pursuing a full-time career as a journalist. Vote 2004 was described in the Sunday Telegraph as the "most successful political campaign of all time". Iain was runner-up in the Guardian Student Media Awards as Columnist of the Year. While at university he also founded and edited The Cambridge Slapper - a popular satirical magazine.
This book covers such a diverse range of topics it’s sure to be of interest to anyone. It also has a little bit of a nostalgia factor because some of the letters refer to events in 2010. One letter reads ‘SIR – I can’t see the Kraft takeover of Cadbury working out. The two companies are like choc and cheese’. This week in 2015 the news has been full of complaints about Kraft changing the recipe for the Cadbury crème egg. I think if The Daily Telegraph were Snow White, her seven dwarfs of letter writing could be called Quirky, Smutty, Disgusted, Smart, Pompous, Eccentric and Baffled (by the modern world). This is the third of these books I’ve read now. I think I’m becoming addicted. I wonder if this is a slippery slope which ends with me writing my own letters to The Daily Telegraph?
This compilation of unpublished letters to The Daily Telegraph is hilarious. You just never know that things that go through your mind are also going through other people's minds. It is a great glimpse into the brains of the public, knowing that you're not alone.
A collection of letters (most of which are very funny) to a well-known British newspaper.
I found this book to be very amusing - in places it was laugh out loud funny, but you probably have to be a UK resident to understand a lot of the references.