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This New York Times bestseller offers a unique glimpse of the events and people of history – the brightest and best, the most notorious, and the endearingly everyday.

About the Author

Shaun Usher is a writer and sole custodian of the popular blogs lettersofnote.com and listsofnote.com. He has transformed both blogs into bestselling books, crowd-funded by Unbound and jointly published by Unbound and Canongate. He lives in Wilmslow with his wife Karina and their two sons. He is the author of the bestselling Letters of Note, More Letters of Note, Lists of Note and Speeches of Note. Along with Simon Garfield's To the Letter, Letters of Note inspired Letters Live, a series of live performances celebrating the enduring power of literary correspondence, with great performers reading remarkable letters to a live audience. Sanjeev Bhaskar is a British actor, writer and comedian known for starring in The Kumars at No. 42 (2001–2006). Other credits include Goodness Gracious Me (1998–2000), The Indian Doctor (2010–2013) and Election Spy (2017). Currently, Sanjeev plays DI Sunil 'Sunny' Khan on Unforgotten, alongside Nicola Walker. In 2006, Sanjeev was honoured with an Order of the British Empire. Louise Brealey is an actor and writer known for her roles in Back (Channel 4), Clique (BBC/Netflix) and Gomorrah (HBO Max). She played the role of Molly Hooper in the multi-award-winning TV series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Her stage work includes roles at the National Theatre, Royal Court, the Young Vic and the Bush with directors Marianne Elliott, Peter Hall, Roger Michell and Howard Davies. Most recently she has co-starred in film comedy Brian and Charles and on television in Netflix’s ghost-hunting smash, Lockwood & Co. Louise can next be seen as the lead in the BFI’s lesbian chicken factory musical Chuck Chuck Baby. Simon Callow is a British actor with a firmly-established reputation for impeccable performance on-stage, on-screen and on audiobook. Perhaps best known for his role in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Callow's reputation in the theatre is also second-to-none. Benedict Cumberbatch was born and raised in London. He attended Harrow School on an arts scholarship, where he began painting and acting. He studied drama at Manchester University, and continued his training with a one-year course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Benedict has worked in theatre, television, film and radio. His breakthrough came in 2004 when he portrayed Stephen Hawking in the television movie Hawking, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actor. In 2010, he became a household name as Sherlock Holmes in the British television series Sherlock. He has appeared in two Oscar-nominated films, War Horse (2011) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and has been noted for his outstanding performance in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013).
Adrian Edmondson is an English comedian, actor, musician and television presenter. He is best known for his roles in BBC's The Comedy Strip Presents ... and The Young Ones, and has since then appeared in dramas Holby City, Surviving Disaster, Prey and War & Peace. Adrian is also a keen narrator, lending his voice to several titles in Shaun Usher's Letters of Note series and narrating two of his own children's books, Tilly and the Time Machine and Junkyard Jack and the Horse that Talked. Neil Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. Distinguished stage, television, and film actor Toby Edward Heslewood Jones was born on September 7, 1966 in Hammersmith, London. His parents, Freddie Jones and Jennie Heslewood, are actors as well. Helen McCrory, OBE, is an illustrious British actress. Appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to drama, Helen’s roles are many and varied. Since 2013 she has played Aunt Polly, matriarch to the Shelby crime family, in Peaky Blinders, the enormously popular historical drama based on Birmingham’s gangs in the 1920s. Helen also portrayed the cool and elegant Narcissa Malfoy in the final three films of the Harry Potter franchise. Helen can also be heard as the voice of Stelmaria, daemon to Lord Asriel, in HBO’s adaptation of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. On stage, Helen has played some of literature’s most famous women, including Medea and Lady Macbeth. Natasha Abigail Taylor is a British actress, known professionally as Natascha McElhone. She made her television debut in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries in 1990, graduated from LAMDA in 1993 and went on to play the lead in her first film, Merchant Ivory's Surviving Picasso opposite Anthony Hopkins. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the films Ronin, The Truman Show and Solaris, and the television series Californication and Designated Survivor. A veteran of stage and screen, award-winning actress Miriam Margolyes has achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic. Miriam won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in 1993 for The Age of Innocence and a Sony Radio Award for Best Actress on Radio in 1993 for her unabridged recording of Oliver Twist. She was the voice of the Matchmaker in Mulan and Fly, the mother dog, in Babe. Miriam played Professor Sprout in the film of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Miriam is also the beloved narrator of many audiobooks and has been selected as one of AudioFile magazine's Golden Voices. Juliet Stevenson is a distinguished actress of film, television and theatre. She was awarded the CBE for her work in drama and received the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress for her performance in Death and the Maiden. Juliet's films include Truly Madly Deeply, Mona Lisa Smile, Being Julia and Bend It Like Beckham. More recently, she has appeared in The Letters, Diana and Before I Go To Sleep.

Reviews

'Another mailbag stuffed with funny, heartbreaking and passionate letters … engaging, eclectic, geekily and gleefully enthusiastic and laugh-out-loud funny.'
*The Times*

'Funny, tragic, brilliantly incisive, historic, lyrical, romantic and studiedly offensive, this stupendous compendium of letters ancient and modern is my book of the year. You will never tire of it.'
*Stephen Fry*