New Scotsman - Note from author Rudyard Kipling found after 40 years on shelf

In a twist of fate of which literary legend Rudyard Kipling himself would have been proud, a new correspondence penned by the writer has been unearthed by the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh.

A member of staff at the college was stunned to find a handwritten letter while sifting through the college archives.

Dated November 20 1909, it came into the ownership of the college hidden inside a copy of The Life of Sir William Osler by Harvey Cushing and had lain in the archives unnoticed since the 1970s.

Quite how the letter, which was addressed to Osler himself, came to be there remains a mystery.

[The letter concerned a visit by McGill professor Sir Andrew McPhail].