April 4, 1990
Dear Simon,
From Chairman of the B(ritish) R(ail)environmental panel to Times editorship in one fell swoop – congratulations! I don’t think it’s ever been done before. In fact I checked with the Guinness Book of Records and they confirmed this. The other way round it’s quite common – many an editor has fallen on evil days and taken a cushy BR committee to help with the train fare – but never going up. They were pretty cagey at Guinness, actually. Maybe it’s because my opening remark was ‘Ernest Sunders here – I’ve got some facts which I think the Guinness Record people ought to know about.’
Anyway, now, when people have stopped congratulating you and started expecting you to turn the paper into a great paper again, even a good one if necessary, is when you need another message of congratulations. So here it is.
Ok. Now get down to turning the paper around.
yours