Writing letters to the Times

This blog was initially set up to as a convenient means of recording my letters published in the Times newspaper.  I sketched out the following piece of doggerel in answer to a few questions from friends and colleagues about how I managed to get so many published.

Having lived in England for a few years I had learned that it was supposed to be very difficult to get a letter published in the Times. This sparked my interest and, after a sort of bet with a former colleague, we both decided to see if either could get published. I also found an article on the subject, which served as an additional inspiration to have a go myself. The article was by a barrister, Francis Bennion, who has to have some sort of record for the number of letters published – over a hundred, though it took him more than half a century to reach that number. Bennion writes:

It is widely regarded as difficult to get a letter into the Times. In Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway Lady Bruton found it difficult even to compose such a letter. One composition 'cost her more than to organise an expedition to South Africa (which she had done in the war). After a morning's battle beginning, tearing up, beginning again, she used to feel the futility of her own womanhood as she felt it on no other occasion, and would turn gratefully to the thought of Hugh Whitbread who possessed - no one could doubt it - the art of writing letters to The Times'.

What might this art entail? Lady Bruton muses thus just after the passage Bennion quotes:

A being so differently constituted from herself, with such a command of language; able to put things as editors like them put; [and who] had passions which one could not call simply greed.

Later she sums it up as having the “logical faculty”, which she also rather anachronistically tells us that the character Millicent Bruton lacked due to her gender (and, admittedly, some truancy).

Bennion concludes his article with the following hints on how to get published:

• Avoid propounding an utterly outrageous view.
• Condense like a milk factory.
• Make your letter self-contained, so it can be grasped by a reader who missed the item you are responding to.
• Write better than the hacks (though this will not win you an invitation to join the staff).
• Subtly suggest you know what you are talking about, and are probably, if the truth were known, the leading expert on the topic.
• Don't however try to puff your own book: this ploy will be seen through and censored.
• Make it interesting.
• Better still, make it compelling.

Modesty precludes me from claiming that my letters embody any of those qualities, but Bennion’s hints are certainly something to keep in mind when composing a letter. Initially I thought that one was most likely to be published if one was able to sign off along the lines of Lt Col Double-Barrelled Surname, The Old Cottage, Little Puddleton-on-the-Marsh, Hampshire, Poona Light Infantry (ret’d). Then again, that certainly doesn’t apply to me, even though a colleague suggested that the editors would have noted approvingly that “Dulwich” appears in my address (if that’s true, then presumably they mistook West Dulwich for Dulwich Village).

Based on the first two letters I managed to get published I thought that one further tip should be added to Bennion’s list:

• Bash Europe.

There is a final hint I’ve noticed others have followed – steal someone else’s letter written long enough ago that the editorial staff will have forgotten it. Truth be told, the Personperson letter I wrote wasn’t my joke originally, though I hasten to add the others were.

One former colleague had the temerity to suggest that I was only being published because, having managed one, they had me on some sort of approved author’s list, the inference being that my subsequent letters were being subjected to less scrutiny than a first-timer’s. Come to think of it, although she meant it as an insult, that would be some achievement in itself (JRJW: approved author for the Times).

After the Euro-bashing letters I had quite a run of success on a random variety of subjects: wine, war, cricket and terrorism for example. I managed to get at least ten published, but there may have been more: to my annoyance I never kept any of the hard copies or even a record of what I sent and what they published, partly through being lazy and partly through not wishing to brag (the emphasis being on the former).

I stopped sending them around 2007, for a few reasons, mostly because the demands of real life left me with insufficient time for such intellectual indulgences. The novelty had also worn off by then.

I regret to add that over the period I did write, the standard of the Letters’ Page decreased, or “dumbed-down” to use modern parlance, and this was a further disincentive to write any more. When I sent the first few letters the Times was still a proper broadsheet, and still respected, despite the proprietorship of Rupert Murdoch which had existed for some years by then. The tabloid version familiar to present day readers was initially published in tandem with the broadsheet, and both were archived, but predictably enough the latter was swiftly abandoned, presumably on cost grounds.

The general dumbing-down was reflected in the process of letter publishing too. For the first few I received a telephone call from a subeditor who sounded almost like Julie Christie. She would run through a few changes they had in mind for my letter. Usually I would wince at them being obviously right, and always I would supinely accede to their demands. Then the phone calls changed to a short request for carte blanche in making any changes they felt like, which needless to say I also supinely accepted. Finally the phone calls ceased altogether, and they would just edit and publish without notification. As a result I only spotted the fact that the last few had been published by chance (in common with the hacks, by this stage I only read the newspaper in the hope of seeing my own contributions).

Two further instances of dumbing-down, no doubt necessitated by the tabloid format, also took place in this time. The first was that they ceased publishing the introductory line. Mine was always just “From Mr James Wilson”, though others would be along the lines of “From the Chairman of the Stretchford Fine Arts and Tramways Committee” or some other such august title.

The second was the cessation of the practice of publishing the full address of correspondents. I had feared that having my full postal address would lead to a deluge of correspondence from cranks and terrorists, but in fact only received a few letters here and there, admittedly some of the crank variety but also others which I found quite amusing. For example, after the second Euro-bashing letter I received an invitation on beautiful stationery inviting me to join the “Bruges Group”, which on investigation turned out to be some sort of reactionary club set up by surviving members of Thatcher’s cabinet.

Bennion also points out that in the (rather longer) period of time in which he has been writing to the Times, published letters have become shorter and shorter, and this trend began long before the introduction of the tabloid format. The letters page is much the poorer for it. I rather like this anecdote from an article Bennion reproduces on his site (it can be found via the link above):

New York Times letters editor Tom Feyer once suggested that letters run about 150 words, invoking the admirable brevity of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The inevitable response from a reader: "Why does Lincoln get 250 and the rest of us a measly 150?"

Now that anyone can publish anything they feel like on a virtually unlimited number of fora on the internet, it might be said that importance of the letters’ page of any newspaper has been greatly diminished. But it might also be said that the importance has increased, since at least one person somewhere has deemed one’s missive to be of interest or relevance to someone. It’s doubtful that the same could be said for many internet-based soapboxes - this blog, for a start!

Coda: needless to say, I couldn’t resist the occasional missive some years later, hence the late additions from 2009 and 2010.  But then the Times became subscription-only, so I stopped completely - there was no point in paying to read my own contributions, and I had no intention of paying to read anyone else's.