You Couldn’t Make It Up…!: Unpublished Letters to The Daily Telegraph

English newspapers, if one may generalize, are either crass or stuffy. The Daily Telegraph reputation tends to be on the latter side, but a new book sets it in a different class altogether. Excerpts from letters to the editor in You Couldn’t Make It Up are hilarious, provocative, even absurd. The quotes address this year in politics, home thoughts from abroad, family, purely personal, and so on. To quote Queen Victoria whose best-known dictum was ‘We are not amused,’ Americans may not find the book universally amusing, but turning the page will offer another smile or LOL.

The rationale for the venture is clear, ‘Celebrity watching gave way to backyard nature-spotting while linguists passed the time devising neologisms.’ In the US, due to a recent leadership change, political pieces are already historical. But they could never compete with UK diversity, like the Indian Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, known to fans as Dishy Rishi. Boris Johnson comes in for a share of attention like a wry comment on a letter received from the Prime Minister on the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘I just hope that he didn’t lick the envelope.’ Older readers must respect the bold eighty-two-year-old who asked, ‘What’s an App?’ and Americans will surely agree that all of us ‘have been affected by a new disease – Statisticus overloadus.