What I’ve learnt from editing a newspaper letters page

Letters to a daily newspaper have a curious power to gain an impetus of their own. ‘I owned a Triumph Herald many decades ago,’ wrote Robert Brown of Crosby to the Telegraph in January. ‘She was my first love. On cold winter nights I would keep her warm with an old mackintosh thrown over her engine under the bonnet. Perhaps it was this that protected her from a thief one night. She was driven off our drive on to the road but steadfastly refused to go any further.’

It soon became clear that we’d hit a seam of experience in recent history, when lives and loves were expressed through small British cars of doubtful reliability. ‘While I was driving my Herald in the 1970s,’ wrote Karen Mullan of Hove, ‘the passenger door flew open on a bend, and my handbag and dog fell out. Happily both were retrieved without injury.’

Too much give in the Herald chassis often meant that the doors opened unexpectedly.