Joining Tom Jackson to discuss the postcards from their pasts are food writer and broadcaster THANE PRINCE and journalist and expert in Russian revolutionary postcards TOBIE MATHEW (Greetings From The Barricades). We discover the strange and vibrant world of postcard manufacturing, collecting and sending in the latter days of Tsarist Russia, explore recipe postcards and catch glimpses of life in Hunstanton, Cromer, Clacton and the Isles of Scilly, as well as gaining an appreciation of public art and private messages. Wish you were here?

Clacton-on-Sea, The Sunken Gardens. “My money is mostly gobbled up in money machines and I also went on an aeroplane.”
Rye, 1975. “The car caught fire at Dartford.”
The Cliff Path in old Hunstanton, Norfolk, where Thane spent her childhood. A postcard she picked up second-hand but which prompts memories of taking this path every day in summer.
Thane’’s postcards of the murals that used to live in the front hall of the Middlesex Hospital, London: Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927). Thane trained as a nurse at the Middlesex, and used to see the paintings every day.
“Monarchist”, 1906. Tobie’s postcard shows a butcher. As a class, butchers were generally pro-tsar at this time. The card has a double-meaning with the cruelty of the monarchists implied by the image of the butcher. “i’ve got tickets for Carmen on Friday, belle etage. All the best, Lutin.”
Tsar Nicolas II in a grim cartoon postcard. The card, which was produced illegally, offers two perspectives, anticipating by 11 years a bad end for the Tsar. Tobie’s card was drawn by an eminent Russian doctor Mikhael Chemodanov.
Lee Bay & Woody Bay, Lynton, Devon, 1959. “The talent isn’t bad but not up to expectations. Anne Herbert went climbing today and fell into a pool of water so Pete took a photograph of her and then helped her out.”
Caister-on-Sea. “There is a really nice boy here. I don’t know his name yet. I’ll try and get a photo of him.”
A recipe postcard from Perigord – part of a collection that Thane made during numerous trips to France.
Two modern reproductions of vintage postcards from Viileneuve-sur-Lot, showing men at the market and women at the river, washing clothes.
Tobie’s amazing card owned by and inscribed by English sailor Harry English, who served on British warship HMS Marlborough, and who had taken the suviving members of the Russian royal family, including the Tsar’s mother to Yalta in Crimea: “This is were [sic] we took the royalty from Russia, April 7th & 8th, 1919.”
A Scilly Isles multiview. “Today in Isles of Scilly we saw Sir Harold Wilson and Bill Oddie of the Goodies.”
A musical postcard of the Bridge of Sighs.