It is probably a scientifically demonstrable fact that anger and disgust are more effective for the motivation of people writing letters to Sunday newspapers than, say, the desire to congratulate a writer on a well-penned piece of prose, or even approval of the sentiment expressed in a column.
We do sometimes get nice letters thanking us for publishing something good, but rarely in the volume that followed the publication on Sunday of Sarfraz Manzoor's piece on Muslim identity and multiculturalism in Britain.
More than one correspondent described it as the best thing they had read on the subject since 7 July.
So we thought we'd flag it up for blog readers who missed it.
For a child of immigrants, the most hurtful insult that could be hurled was the one which challenged the right to call this country home. The challenge usually took the form of three words: 'Go back home.' The words stung because they implied that the immigrant did not truly belong in Britain; he had lucked out to be living here but home, the insult suggested, was somewhere else ...
