Tom Jackson, the collector behind the popular Twitter account, picks six of his favourite postcards – and their often incongruous messages – from his new book In his introduction to the book, Mark Haddon refers to my cards with their messages as ‘very short and very cryptic stories’. This formulaic multi-view card of Torquay holds a terrible secret that feels…
These days the picture postcard has got lost in the email, but collector Tom Jackson’s new book celebrates this dying communication. Their messages carry a funny and often poignant link to our past. About a year ago, on a quiet day at the office, I started posting postcards on Twitter. Not for their collectable beauty or even for their historic…
I have spent much of this week immersed in the oddly enthralling PostcardFromThePast, a Twitter account showing thousands of old picture-postcard views accompanied only by brief, undated quotes from their unnamed writers. You don’t need a Twitter account of your own to look through these “fragments of life in real messages on postcards from the past” but – such…
In the depths of February, summer seems a long way away – so for this week’s cover reveal we’re taking you somewhere sunny. Tom Jackson’s Postcard From The Past, based on the cult Twitter account, is a nostalgic and hilarious collection of real-life messages from the backs of vintage British postcards, and its cover will have you longing for piers, seagulls and ice…
Sometimes in a stressful, high-powered world sometimes we all need a simple pleasure. For us, that comes in the form of this Twitter account. On a platform that usually sees people engaging in heavy-duty debate and name-calling, PostcardFromThePast is a little island of postcard-based calm. It’s not a complicated premise. The owner of the account digs up old postcards and…
The not-too-distant past is a cosy place, even with tales of murderous fowl. “Are under siege by seven savage geese who attack us when we emerge from caravan,” reads one postcard with a picture of a bucolic scene on the front. “Weather good so far.” The Twitter account Postcard From The Past (@PastPostcard) has been delighting its quickly amassed 22,000…
Fourth Estate is to publish Postcard from the Past, a book based on the popular Twitter account of the same name, by postcard collector Tom Jackson. The publisher acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada and audio) from Kirsty McLachlan at David Godwin Associaties. Created by Jackson, the Postcard from the Past Twitter account offers a feed of images of…
Postcards, like phone boxes and people actually knocking on your door for a chat, feel like methods of communication from a far-off and long-gone age. Who but the most sentimental traveller to a strange city or foreign land would bother to buy a rectangle of glossy card with a decades-old image on the front, queue for a stamp, then hunt…
Rob Brydon, Matt Lucas and Graham Lineham are all fans of a Twitter account which tweets out vintage postcards and their messages.One man’s online tribute to the dying tradition of sending postcards has become an unlikely Twitter hit. Tom Jackson, from south London, tweets images of postcards from the past, together with a snippet of the handwritten message on the…