21 AUGUST 2004, Page 55

Q. To KS of Sydney (anxious to find a systematic

way of rereading the heaps of Spectator clippings he or she puts aside as too good to bin), your advice (14 August) that your correspondent paste one clipping to the lavatory wall every day, read it on the loo, and paste another over it for the next visit, was contrived with your characteristic delicacy. A more robust application of the same strategy was described to me by a friend who travelled India with War and Peace and dysentery, and ran out of lavatory paper. Determined never to lose a page before reading it, he found (he said) that the stomach was a wonderful spur to progress through this important classic.

Matthew Parris, Derbyshire A. Thank you for your learned contribution.