Find out which letter will be read live on stage at the Royal Albert Hall
Presented by Letters Live, in partnership with The Times and supported by Montblanc.
London means something different to everyone. A memory. A moment. A place. A person. A feeling. In our letter writing competition Dear London, launched this summer, we invited people from across the globe to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and write a personal letter to the city we call home.
And now, without further ado, we can reveal the winning letter!
We received more than 3,000 entries from you wonderful lot, many handwritten and sent via post. These missives were whittled down to a group of 50 before five judges, including Benedict Cumberbatch, shaved the list down to five shortlisted letters and a winner. The winning letter will be read live on stage at Letters Live at the Royal Albert Hall on the 28th November.
The winning letter will be read aloud on stage at Letters Live at the Royal Albert Hall on 28 November 2025. An unforgettable night in one of the world’s most iconic venues.
Dear London,
The first time I met you, it felt like crossing into another realm. You towered above me, all
iron, stone and soot-stained glory, and I stood there slack-jawed, heart thudding, feeling like
I’d landed somewhere between a Dickens novel and a fever dream.
You don’t ease people in, do you? You throw ’em in headfirst. One minute I was watching a
procession of red double-deckers rumble by, the next I was being swept along your
pavements, jostled by suits and dreamers and market lads yelling two-for-a-pound. You
move like blood through an artery, fast, vital, unrelenting. Always something happening.
Always someone late for something.
You’re noise and nuance, poetry and pain, snogging in the rain with elbows knocking over
lukewarm chips in a paper tray. I learned quickly to Look Up! Above the shopfronts and
sandwich boards, I found whispers of your stories. Gargoyles scowling down like old East
End aunties keeping tabs. War-scarred stone, bullet-pocked and proud. Carved cherubs and
clock faces and bricked-up windows – secrets sealed shut. There’s history in every crack. In
every lamppost and doorknob. You’ve seen it all and carry on, chin up, coat buttoned, eyes
where the horizon should be, lost behind cranes, glass, and the ever-climbing spine of
ambition.
You’re contradictions stitched together with bus routes and ballads. Royal Parks and rickety
cafés. Palaces with gold gates and corners that smell like chip fat and fox-piss. One minute
it’s pearls and Parliament, the next it’s a bloke in a tracksuit having a deep philosophical chat
with a pigeon outside a chicken shop. That’s the thing, London. You make space for the
grand and the grim, the posh and the piss-pot poor, all marching along, minding the gap to
the sound of “Cockfosters”. You’re an overture to stories told in 300 languages, every accent
a note in your sprawling score.
There’s your wildness, quiet, steady. Green veins snaking through concrete, cannel, and
chaos. Foxes screaming at 3am echoing in alleyways, woodlands hidden in plain sight, deer
blinking through the mist like myths. You’re nature and unnature. Even your pigeons
swagger. Even your trees remember names long forgotten, initials carved in bark, plaques
bolted to benches, roots tangled with echoes of executions, pretty maids all in a row.
You taught me to walk with purpose and curiosity. To trust my feet. To get lost and like it. To
see the city not as one thing, but as a thousand overlapping selves, all breathing in time. You
gave me strangers who saved me with a nod on grey days. You showed me that beauty
needs ugliness to shine.
Even now, when I catch a glimpse of you, your skyline through the fog, a Tube map in a
stranger’s book, I get that tug in my chest. That knowing.
Because you’re not just a place I’ve been.
You’re a part of me now.
And I’ll love you, always,
for the stories you told me
and the ones you dared me to write.
Kerrin-Lee Nell
To read the four shortlisted letters, and find out more about the inspiration behind Dear London, head to the Times website now >