The thing about open letters are they are written to be read by everyone, so you can imagine my surprise and delight when I was invited to be on the judging panel for the Dear London letter writing competition.

We didn’t get to meet in person (or at all) but it was very exciting to know I was on the panel with Benedict Cumberbatch, Shaun Usher (from Letters Live), and folks from The Times and Montblanc.

From around 3,000 original letters, 50 were initially shortlisted for us all to read and score, which then went down to 5 for us to pick the overall winner. Huge congratulations to Kerrin-Lee Nell, whose letter will be read out at Letters Live on 28th November at the Royal Albert Hall. All 50 were worthy of being in a book in my mind.

Click HERE to read the five short-listed letters.

Dinah