Kmflett's Blog

According to a Mr J. Rotten, late of Finsbury Park:

How many ways to get what you want

I use the best, I use the rest

I use the NME

I use anarchy

(Anarchy in the UK)

On Tuesday someone tweeted to me to ask if I could remember what I wrote letters to the NME about in the 1980s and 1990s.

I certainly did write letters to the NME, no doubt about left-wing politics, anti-racism and probably beards, but their specific content I cant recall. The only exception is a comment by an unnamed NME staffer under a letter I wrote. Their comment (not my letter) referred in a slightly unkind way to my role in the closure of the Sunday Correspondent in November 1990.

I asked twitter if anyone could remember what the fletters were about with little success, with the exception of a former NME journalist David Stubbs who noted I had once been a bit rude about his views of the Iraq War.

There is, as there is often is, a wider point. As a research historian I am wary of using memory to construct an historical record. Memory is often partial and sometimes just mistaken. I prefer archives:

Alan Rusbridger, archives & preserving modern historical records

Fortunately there is a relatively easy way of resolving the question of what the subject matter of the NME Fletters  were about. Watch this space as it were…