From the Library With Love – Details, episodes & analysis

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When Brian was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2010, his friend Alison offered to write letters to cheer him up. Over the next two years, as Brian’s cancer moved from stage III to IV, Alison’s letters kept on coming.

The letters became part of Brian’s recovery process, while Alison discovered a passion for writing she never knew existed. 

Brian is now cancer-free, Alison is a writer, and the two have a relationship that only the term ‘best friends’ can describe. Alison and Brian are now dedicated to getting us all writing letters through their charity, https://www.frommetoyouletters.co.uk/about

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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What happens when ordinary people are faced with extraordinary choices?

In her second blistering novel set on the Channel Island of Jersey, Beyond Summerland, author Jenny Le Coat turns her attentions to the often overlooked issue of what happened after Liberation Day...

Jean Parris was a child when her adored father was taken away by the Nazis. As she and her mother wait anxiously for news, the life Jean thought she knew begins to fall apart.

Hazel Le Tourneur has never conformed to the island’s idea of perfect womanhood. But is she the worst kind of collaborator – an informer?

In the summer of 1945, the Liberation of Jersey has unleashed a different kind of war: one of suspicion, accusation and revenge. For among the heroism and sacrifice, there has also been betrayal and corruption. And while the beautiful island is permanently scarred by gun towers and bunkers, its people must learn to live with a different kind of wound – the desire for truth.

Jenny Lecoat is a novelist and screenwriter. Her debut novel The Girl From the Channel Islands was a New York Times bestseller.

In the 1980s she was one of the first female stand-ups on the UK Alternative Comedy circuit, before going on to write for magazines and newspapers, and later for television.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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In this episode, award-winning historical fiction author, Hazel Gaynor remembers the World War Two ‘seaevacuees’, the children sent away from Britain by sea to escape the bombings at home. This is an often-forgotten part of the history of the war, overshadowed by more familiar events, and it inspired Hazel to write her new novel, The Last Lifeboat.

Here she shares the heroine at the heart of this survival story, how she researched it and why these women and children deserve to be remembered.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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In The Sugar Girls of Love Lane, out today, Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, the authors of the Sunday Times bestseller The Sugar Girls, tell the remarkable stories of those who worked at the famous Tate & Lyle factory in Liverpool.  

For over a hundred years until it closed in 1981, Henry Tate’s flagship sugar refinery at Love Lane dominated the Liverpool skyline – and was the beating heart of the local community. More than 10,000 workers passed through the doors of the factory during its lifetime, with some families counting four or even five generations of service. Young women leaving school in the post-war years were drawn by the good wages and the unrivalled social life that Tate & Lyle offered.

When they arrived, they started at the very bottom, sweeping sugar off the floors, before graduating to packing and weighing by hand. The work was tough, with girls expected to stack heavy bags of sugar onto pallets five feet high, and by the end of the day their arms were aching and their stockings full of sugar dust. But, despite the hot, heavy work, they found their own ways of having fun, and the friendships they formed would last a lifetime. As well as the female friendships, many women met their future husbands at the factory, and expected their own children to follow in their footsteps.

Duncan and Nuala's social history of the post-war era casts a warm and nostalgic look back at one of the most iconic factories in the north, bringing back a vanished era of hard work, community spirit and simple pleasures.  

In this episode, Duncan reveals how he set about researching and writing his latest book, the challenges of writing non-fiction and why social histories set in the 1960s are ripe for exploration.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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‘Reading gives us a privacy of the mind. Librarians are heroes.’ Librarian turned bestselling author Janet Skeslien Charles told me.

In this episode we discuss the remarkable true story behind the brave Parisian librarians in WW2 who inspired The Paris Library.

Her new book, Miss Morgan's Book Brigade, out April 30 2024, based on a true story of a group of intrepid women who lived in a crumbling chateau 40 miles from the front in WW1 to help heal the atrocities of war. We discuss censorship, the craft of writing, plotting and the research that helps us feel our way into the past. Janet is the ultimate bibliophile. If you love books about books, this is the episode for you.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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This year marks 112 years since the Titanic hit an iceberg on 14 April 1912, and in that time the doomed vessel has spawned countless myths, thousands of books and, of course, James Cameron’s Oscar-winning film Titanic . But In our quest to get to get closer to the so-called ‘Ship of Dreams’ have we overlooked the human tragedy at the heart of the disaster? In this conversation, historian and author Claes Wetterholm, from Stockholm, reveals some heartbreaking, untold personal stories…

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy.  Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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Libraries are about so much more than books. Just ask librarian for Kingston Upon Thames, Marion Tessier, who trained as a boardgame librarian. On National Boardgame Day, she gives us a fasincating glimpse into her job. 

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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Brianna Labuskes is more than just a gifted writer,  she is a story hunter, who delves deep into the past and finds histories forgotten heroines. 

In this fascinating conversation, Brianna shares the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime--the WWII organisation founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as "weapons in the war of ideas" This book inspired, The Librarian of Burned Books.

Her latest, The Lost Book of Bonn,  is about the librarians who worked for the Library of Congress, sent to Germany as part of an effort led by the Monuments Men to return Nazi-plundered books to their rightful owners.  

Both of these titles are a book lovers dream. 

'Language has always been a reflection of ourselves, and silencing it, banning it, destroying it, silences, bans and destroys people,' Brianna says.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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It's March, the month of daffodils, pussy willow and lambs - what better time to pay a visit to Twig Farm!

Paula Steer is one of a new breed of shepherdesses blazing a trail across social media. Paula’s been farming sheep farm at Twig Farm in Devon for the past twenty years, following in the footsteps of her great-great grandmother Lily Warne. Despite battling a brain tumour this irrepressible female sheep farmer is also writing her memoirs. I started by asking her how she made the leap from accountancy to sheep…

To visit Paula's divine shop, Lily Warne Wool, click here  

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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Historical fiction author, Jacquie Bloese draws her inspiration from atmospheric locations with intriguing histories, and people – both real and imaginary – whose stories are calling out to be told.

Her latest release, The Golden Hour, set in Victorian Brighton is a compelling and deeply atmospheric read. In this fascinating episode, Jacquie discuses the inspiration for her second novel, the challenges of researching the Victorian age and growing up in Guernsey, the island which inspired her debut novel, The French House,

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In the genteel squares of late-Victorian Brighton, Ellen and Reynold Harper - twins, companions, colleagues - ply their trade as portrait photographers.

But at the golden hour, the models arrive to pose for the lucrative - and illicit - photographs that really keep the Harpers' business afloat. This is the other, shadowy world of the city: a world of erotic tableaux, boundary-crossing music hall performers, and the sinister figure of the local gangster, the Croc.

When Ellen is drawn into the orbit of unhappy newly-wed Clementine, she finds herself torn between loyalty to her brother, her dangerous attraction to new model, Lily, and her burgeoning friendship with Clem. And as the two worlds of Brighton collide, the three women discover that there is only a knife edge between the promise of freedom, and the threat of ruin . . .

Atmospheric, sensual and powerfully moving, The Golden Hour is a spellbinding portrait of three women determined to find their freedom - perfect for fans of Sarah Waters, The Doll Factory and The Essex Serpent.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.