From the Library With Love
Librarians, bestselling authors and our wartime generation sharing their love of books, reading and some extraordinary stories .
#Hidden History #Forgotten women #Bibliotherapy #Libraries
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to From the Library With Love. A podcast for anyone whose life has been changed by reading. I’m Kate Thompson.
Wonderful, transformative things happen when you set foot in a library. In 2019 I uncovered the true story of a forgotten Underground library, built along the tracks of a Tube tunnel during the Blitz. As stories go, it was irresistible and the result was, The Little Wartime Library, my seventh novel.
Bethnal Green Public Library, where the novel is set was 100 years old in October 2022, and to celebrate the centenary of this grand old lady, funded by library philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, I set myself the challenge of interviewing 100 library workers. Speaking with one library worker for every year this library has been serving its community seemed a good way to mark this auspicious occasion. Because who better to explain the worth of a hundred-year-old library, than librarians themselves!
I wanted to explore the enduring value of libraries and reading. I quickly realised that librarians have the best stories.
My research led me to librarians with over fifty years of experience and MBEs, to the impressive women who manage libraries in prisons and schools, to those in remote Scottish islands. From poetry libraries overlooking the wide sweep of the Thames, to the 16th century Shakespeare’s Library in Stratford, via the small but mighty Leadhills Miners’ Library.
This podcast was born out of those eye-opening conversations, because as Denise from Tower Hamlets Library told me: 'If you want to see the world, don't join the Army, become a librarian!'
I’ll also be talking to international bestselling authors and some remarkable wartime women about their favourite libraries, stories, the craft of writing and the book that helped them to view the world differently. Come and join me as I delve into the secrets behind the stacks.
Podcasts edited by Ben Veasey at media-crews.co.uk
Image by Julie Price
From the Library With Love
Vanishing Voices of Wartime London. Meet the proud cockneys who survived being blown up, machine-gunned and being buried alive!
Welcome to a special episode, in which I seek out east London’s vanishing wartime voices.
From my experience cockneys aren’t a dying breed, they are alive and flourishing, part of the cockney diaspora of Essex, Suffolk, Kent and even as far afield as Australia.
What is in danger of disappearing are the vanishing voices of wartime East London. Go to East London today and you will hear a myriad of accents, transformed as it is by immigration and gentrification.
What you will struggle to hear are the voices that were heard in the shelters, pubs, markets and factories of wartime London. Even less likely, the beautiful lyrical songs, like the one which starts this special episode by east ender Dot Smee who sung in the shelters during the Blitz to drown out the sound of the bombs. Or poetry written and recited by Whitechapel seamstress, Sally Flood to express her frustration at the monotony of wartime work.
This episode features three enterprising east enders who, like Dot, didn’t just survive during the Second World War, but thrive. Their unique and beautiful voices, songs, poems and memories offer a fascinating glimpse into the kind of people wartime east Londoners are and the war that shaped them.
For more true stories from East London, why not check out my only non-fiction book on the wartime matriarchy, The Stepney Doorstep Society.
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.