Readers of the 'brilliant Telegraph Letters page', as Ian Hislop recently lauded it, will be fondly aware of the eclectic combination of learned wisdom, wistful nostalgia and robust good sense that characterise its correspondence. But what of the 95 per cent of the paper's huge postbag which never sees the light of day? Some of the best letters inevitably arrive too late for the 24/7 news cycle, or don't quite fit with the rest of the day's selection. Others are just a little too whimsical, or indeed too risque, to publish in a serious newspaper. And more than a few are completely and utterly (and wonderfully) mad, such as the missives you'll find within these pages from someone who signs himself merely as "M", and believes himself to be the head of MI6. Now, the Telegraph gives the authors of these unpublished letters the stage at last. Baffled, furious, defiant, mischievous, they inveigh and speculate on every subject under the sun, from the rubbish on television these days to the venality of our MPs, from Kate Winslet's decolletage to this country's unhealthy obsession with marmalade. All those Telegraph readers who wondered if anyone else had noticed that the lunatics had finally taken over the asylum and sat down to write to their favourite newspaper to test the waters - they need howl into the void no longer. They are not alone.

Iain Hollingshead spent two years on the Letters to the Editor desk before becoming a full-time feature writer for The Daily Telegraph. His more serious assignments have included reporting on the student riots in London and interviewing everyone from Michael Atherton to Gurkha veterans to a member of Seal Team Six, the elite unit which killed Osama bin Laden. His less serious assignments have included taking a bath in Las Vegas with six albino rabbits, spending three days behind the scenes at the Miss England competition, camping outside Westminster Abbey for the Royal Wedding, eating in five Michelin starred restaurants in one day, learning to flirt in Pizza Express, learning to Dance in Mamma Mia!, performing stand-up comedy to 300 eight-year-olds, training with the Royal Marines, climbing into a Spitfire and experiencing a Brighton nudist beach first hand. He now writes freelance for the paper. He has edited four bestselling collections of unpublished letters from the Daily Telegraph for Aurum.