i Editor's Letter: Browsing your letters...

Every morning, once I’ve cycled the shortcut down Kensington Palace Gardens – that half-mile avenue past the embassies and residences of Russia, India, France, the Sauds, various captains of industry and lastly, at the bottom, guarded by machine gun marksmen, the Israelis – I turn to i’s inbox.

I read all your correspondence – as does Rhodri, the deputy editor, and Hollie, who runs our reader services – and try to reply to a few of you before Denise, the editor’s PA, who’s really in charge here, announces the start of our 10am news conference.

This morning I learnt that it is “perfectly normal” for a pilot with as little as 43 hours flying a specific airliner to be at the controls (thanks Huw Baumgartner, Bridell, Pembs). I was lambasted for a change to the TV listings (sorry, Andrea) and reminded of Plato’s observation that “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore...let early education be a sort of amusement...” (Geraldine Tassell, Stopsley, Beds).

Sometimes a letter comes along that stops you and blocks out the newsroom hubbub. Today it was from Annette Keeler, of Copmanthorpe in York, who writes on the loss of her 20-year-old daughter Eleanor, and the work of Cardiac Risk in the Young (page 14).

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Thank you, again, for supporting i. Monday’s edition, where we covered that bat and ball contest, is among our most-read. Your ranks now include a certain Men’s Singles champion – who turned first to i and to The Financial Times as he surveyed Monday’s press coverage. Good luck to England in the Ashes, which begin today in Nottingham.

i@independent.co.uk

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