From the Library With Love

Send us Fan Mail During the Second World War, Ruth Brook escaped Nazi persecution in Germany and followed her wartime sweetheart, a Lancaster Bomber into the RAF. As a WAAF, she quickly found a sense of her own purpose. Ruth was offered a job as a cook, a typist or a flight mechanic. She picked up a spanner and her life began. From welding to hydraulics, WW2 was a intense training ground for a young woman starting out in life. In her 101 years Ruth has packed a lot in. From working as...

Send us Fan Mail In the 19th century it was surprisingly easy for a woman to be consigned to the misery of an asylum. Many in fact weren't actually mentally ill. Husband tired of his wife? A woman who bore an illegitimate child? A woman who didn't want to marry the man her parents had chosen for her? Or anyone, in short, who didn't conform to the narrow standards of society. Once a woman was incarcerated, it was almost impossible to get out of a place often described as 'death traps'...

Send us Fan Mail Neil Barclay is an award-winning civilian librarian at HMP Thameside. Nominated by prisoners, and described by his colleagues as “our library superstar”, Neil has been praised for the outstanding dedication, skill and creativity he has shown in transforming the prison’s library into a dynamic learning and resource centre, much valued by prisoners and staff, and described as “the envy of other prisons”. Here he shares with us his passionate belief that books and reading...

Send us Fan Mail Donna Jones Alward is prolific author, writing over sixty novels. Here she explains why her first historical fiction novel, When the World Fell Silent, challenged her to grapple with a dark chapter in Canada's history... When the World Fell Silent A Globe and Mail and Toronto Star bestseller 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia Nora Crowell wants more than her sister’s life as a wife and mother. As WWI rages across the Atlantic, she becomes a lieutenant in the Canadian Army Nursing...

Send us Fan Mail 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 c...

Send us Fan Mail Ivor was just 12 years old when he was taken to Auschwitz. He survived with the help of his older brother, but the rest of his family were murdered in the Holocaust. He was brought to England in November 1945 as one of a group of orphans, and started forging a new life. Ivor built a successful clothes manufacturing company; married and had four children (and now six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren). For half a century, the past stayed in the past – until it ...

Send us Fan Mail Mervyn Kersh recently celebrated his 99th birthday. Nearly a century of life on earth and what a life he has had. The hair may have turned silver, but he still has the same twinkle in his eye that he had as a young man. I went to visit Mervyn at his immaculate home in Cockfosters, which he shares with his two cats, and over a cup of tea and ginger biscuits he told me his remarkable story. In this episode you can listen to his experiences of the D Day landings, enteri...

Send us Fan Mail The BBC’s period drama “Call the Midwife” made an eccentric, lovable community of nuns and nurses famous the world over. But what of the formidable East End mothers whose babies they delivered? Join me, Kate Thompson and Smithsonian historian Alan Capps as we delve deep into the social history of some truly remarkable women. During the 20th century, London’s history-rich East End, in common with all working-class communities, was a fiercely matriarchal society. Women in apro...

Send us Fan Mail 99-year-old Professor George Leitmann is a unique man. He is both a holocaust survivor and a WW2 US Army veteran who helped to liberate Nazi occupied France and Germany. Nazi persecution of Jewish people forced George and his family to flee their home in Austria and emigrate to the USA. Tragically, his father Josef was unable to get a visa to join them. Initially the family received Red Cross Messages from Josef but by 1940 these had stopped. As soon as he was old eno...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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, ...

Send us Fan Mail 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 ...