
At the time, I had just suffered a head-on collision with the music industry, after a long period of post-teen crisis sparked by a series of family bereavements. Reading these phrases back now, well over a decade later, I’m slightly embarrassed by the wording, but not at all by the sentiment. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving such eloquent expression to pretty much everything that needed to be said, and for providing a reason to hope, when I for one was just about ready to despair. I read your book Capitalist Realism last week, and it felt like coming up for air after a long time spent underwater.

‘Dear Mark,’ began an email of January 2010 to a man I had never met:
