Joining Tom Jackson to discuss the postcards from their pasts are crime writer SARAH HILARY (Someone Else’s Skin,No Other Darkness, Tastes Like Fear, Never Be Broken) and historical biographer CLARE MULLEY (The Woman Who Saved the Children, The Spy Who Loved, The Women Who Flew for Hitler). We discover postcards from a Japanese internment camp, from Egypt during the First World War, and from a Blackpool tram. We hear about letters from Hitler’s bunker, letters in Austrian binbags and the story of Emperor Hirohito’s poster couple. Wish you were here?
Blackpool’s Illuminated Tramcars, 1977. “Weather is dry but cold. I have had a dog bite on my nose and had to got to the hospital.”Butter Market & Ancient House, Ipswich, 1967. “June, Beryl & I went to Enid’s house last night for a tupperware party. It seemed strange walking down the road where I used to live 12 years ago.” Clare’s card sent to her grandfather by a friend, from Egypt in 1916.”We’ve been christened the Stop The War draft. So good luck to us, eh? Joe”The front and back of a multiple-choice field postcard sent by Sarah’s Grandfather sent from from when they were interned in a Japanese camp during the second world war. “I am interned in a camp in Kuching in Sarawak.” Sent in March 1943, it took 18 months to arrive in England.The Waterfront, Liverpool, 1977. “Arrived at my sister’s to find they had written the car off in an accident. Cut by glass mainly. Make-up covered the cuts for the wedding day but everyone was shook up.”A postcard sent to Clare by her father when she was at guide camp. This card prompted discussion and memories of, and a letter from, her late father.Sarah’s postcard – front and back – sent May 7th, 1919. This was a postcard sent to Sarah’s 3-year-old grandmother, living in then Calcutta, from her grandmother. ‘My darling little Florrie, “Grandma’s little Queen…”‘ Lynmouth, The Harbour. 1976. “I’ve discovered that my son-in-law has similar tastes to mine – beer in pubs with fruit machines.”
