How Did We End Up Here?: Unpublished Letters to the Daily Telegraph

by Kate Moore

In another surreal and unprecedented year in which even the most seasoned commentators have struggled to keep pace with the news cycle, letter writers to The Daily Telegraph have once again provided their refreshing and witty take on events.  Now in its fifteenth year, this new edition of the best-selling series is a review of the year made up of the wry and astute observations of the unpublished Telegraph letter writers.   Readers of the Telegraph Letters Page will be fondly aware of the eclectic combination of learned wisdom, wistful nostalgia and robust good sense of humour that characterise its correspondence – and this volume contains yet more pearls of insight. With an agenda as enticing as ever, the fourteenth book in the bestselling Unpublished Letters series will prove, once again, that the Telegraph’s readers still have a shrewd sense of what really matters.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 12, 2023

About the author

KATE MOORE started writing obituaries for The Daily Telegraph in 2013 and joined the Letters desk as an assistant editor the following year. She now splits her time between the two departments. Kate edited So, That Went Well..., the 2019 collection of unpublished letters.

(Source: Amazon.)

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

The yearly dose of gammon. Evidently what passes for bantz in Farage worshipping circles.

[Theediscerning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having only a week prior to this read the first in what The Times hope is a series of very similar books, based on published letters that found themselves in the more flippant bottom-right corner of their readers' contributions page, it was great to get back on firmer ground. Yes, the published Times letters contained big name authors (with all apologies to this volume's entrant the Countess of Macclesfield, writing from Henley on Thames) but this series seems a shoe-in for the superior one as long as either may last. Here you get more of a response to actual things, events and news – the Times equivalent really seemed to be a collection of responses to not the news but their writers' op-eds and flim-flam articles.

Yes, both share a problem where people try too hard to get included, either in the recycling of an old joke or just in putting too much obvious effort into their words, but these snappy snapshots of the world of 2023 are much better. This is the world of dodgy celebrity malfeasances we have happily forgotten, something about much of the sport (and Just Stop Oil's success at getting much sought-after tickets for everything), and more than enough quippage about the woke bollux, gender dysmorphia and pronoun wrangling that is sending much about us down the dumper and our sanity levels lower on a daily basis.

2023 doesn't have to be remembered, particularly – I doubt any year this decade has attained much of an approval rating – but this series certainly deserved no gap in its run, and I didn't like the idea of not getting my annual slice of this kind of erudite whimsy. I enjoyed it pretty much as well as I have what ones of the previous 14 I've opened. A strong four stars.

[Gracie:) · Rating 2 out of 5]

*Disclaimer: reading this book does not necessarily reflect my own political views*
A collection of unpublished letters to the Daily Telegraph catalogues different aspects of Britain in 2023. From the Royal family, to entertainment, to sport, it did a have a variety of content. However, some of the comments I found sexist, racist and very rude. I would not recommend!