Ombudsmen (ONO) from May 2005 to May 2007, serving as a board member since May 2002 after joining in April 2001. He has lectured and taken part in seminars on the function of ombudsmen in the media nationally and internationally (including in the US, Russia, Scandinavia, and Slovenia), inspiring newspapers in other parts of the world to create their own readers' editors; typically, The Hindu has referenced "the exemplary practice and experience of The Guardian, whose pioneering RE, Ian Mayes, had set the bar high." He is credited with the discovery of the "apostrofly", "an insect which lands at random on the printed page depositing an apostrophe wherever it alights". His last column as Readers' Editor appeared on 2 April 2007, since when he has been an associate editor of the Guardian. He has been honoured by the creation of "The Ian Mayes Award for Writing Wrongs" in 2008. Mayes has been researching and writing over the past decade the third volume of the official history of The Guardian, beginning in 1986, his aim being to "humanise the decisions that have shaped the Guardian and its editorial line". Hazlitt Society Mayes was instrumental in the project to restore William Hazlitt's grave, after visiting the original neglected gravestone in St Anne's Churchyard early in 2001. The restored grave was unveiled by Michael Foot on the 225th anniversary of Hazlitt's birth, 10 April 2003. Mayes was closely involved with the subsequent formation of the Hazlitt Society, of which he was inaugural Chairman. Works Bibliography Samuel De Wilde, c.1751-1832: Theatre in Georgian and Regency London : George James De Wilde, 1804-1871, The life and times of Victorian Northampton: An exhibition at Northampton Central Art Gallery, 4 September to 2 October, 1971 (Northampton Museums and Art Gallery, 1971). Corrections and Clarifications (Fourth Estate, 2000), , and (Guardian Books, 2000), Corrections and Clarifications 2002 (Atlantic Books, 2002), Only Correct: The Best of Corrections and Clarifications (Guardian Books, 2005), Journalism Right and Wrong: Ethical and Other Issues Raised by Readers in the Guardian's Open Door Column (Guardian Books, February 2007), Selected articles "John Bell, The British Theatre and Samuel De Wilde", Apollo, 113 (1981), pp. 99–103. "Inside the cocoon" (review of Marcel Proust: Selected Letters, vol 2, 1904-1909, edited by Philip Kolb), The Guardian, 18 January 1990. "On an unsound footing: The readers' editor on... the role of syntax in dancing", The Guardian, 8 January 1999.