Cyclopaedia’s last page

SIR – My wife has just ordered a copy of the very last edition of Pears’ Cyclopaedia. For our 48 wedded years it has been a companion to the Telegraph Saturday prize crossword and, lately, the Herculis general knowledge crossword. Google largely caused the almanac’s demise, but it was also a victim of its own success in that people only needed to upgrade it every decade or so. After all, sections such as Classical Mythology and Chemical Elements are timeless.

We bid farewell to yet another British institution.

Dave Alsop

Churchdown, Gloucestershire