i Editor's Letter: Our great spectacle of humanity

I’ll miss the spectacle of humanity that is the London Marathon this year – I’m away seeing family. The 30,000 used to run past my doorstep when I lived in a dodgy block of flats near Tower Bridge, which did make nipping over the road for milk quite a challenge. And I’ll never forget the year we stood on the final corner outside Buckingham Palace, where we saw one stricken runner lifted to his feet by fellow competitors, who carried him 200 metres over the finishing line.

This Sunday, we at i will be cheering on a colleague, Kannan Ganga, our human resources director, who is fundraising for Bowel Cancer UK. Kannan is running in memory of his partner, who died on marathon day last year - he writes movingly of their time together. Good luck to the thousands of runners who are doing their bit to improve life for other people.

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Tuesday will bring a dip in the sea off Bournemouth. After Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Leeds, the i team are visiting the south coast to host our next student iDebate, “Political chaos on 8 May would be good for British democracy.” Free tickets for the debate and drinks reception, where there’ll be the chance to meet (and grill) our editors and columnists, are available here: ind.pn/idebatebournemouth.

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i’s Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent Kim Sengupta has been shortlisted for The Orwell Prize for political writing, for his reporting in Gaza and Ukraine. The prize honours work which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition “to make political writing into an art”. If you would like to read more, Kim’s 2,100-word account of a month in Gaza during the bombardment, which ran in i last August, can be found here: ind.pn/gaza220415.

i@independent.co.uk

Twitter.com: @olyduff