Mary Hogan, London, writes:

Just wanted to congratulate JMI on another cracking issue (November-December 05). The articles are unfailingly full of ideas and vigour and often extremely well written. I loved John Waters’ observations on ‘the pulse of the materialist-individualist world’ – pop, and its relation to never ‘growing up’. Toner Quinn’s article, ‘The Pressure to Conform’, fascinated me as I have started to play traditional Irish and other folk music in recent years myself and recognised well what he writes of. And I was utterly intrigued by ‘Composition as Vandalism’ though I’d not previously heard of Donnacha Dennehy – what a superb piece of writing on Bob Gilmore’s part.