From the Library With Love
Welcome to my library of interviews...
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
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
Episodes
57 episodes
Jean Fullerton, policewoman and district nurse turned novelist on why there is no such thing as an ordinary life.
Former policewoman and district nurse turned novelist, Jean Fullerton has written over 20 novels but recently published something a bit closer to home, her memoir, A Child of the East End. In conversation ...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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54:37
Author Louisa Treger investigates the audacious woman who tricked her way into a brutal insane asylum to expose the truth
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...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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41:35
British booksellers in the Blitz
Historical fiction author Kristy Cambron wears a lot of hats. She's a Christy Award-winning author of historical fiction, including her bestselling novels, THE BUTTERFLY AND THE VIOLIN an...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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1:07:59
What it's like to be a prison librarian? Neil Barclay invites us into HMP Thameside library in London.
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...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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43:56
The mysterious photo that inspired a tale of secrets, loss and betrayal in wartime Cornwall.
Rachel Hore is the multi-million selling Sunday Times author of thirteen novels with her fourteenth,
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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55:15
Shattered cities. Donna Jones Alward on uncovering the WW1 explosion which devastated Nova Scotia
Donna Jones Alward is prolific author, writing over sixty novels. Here she explains why her first historical fiction novel, When the Wo...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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57:42
"I wrote 100 letters to my friend with cancer. It transformed our lives."
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 pa...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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31:17
What happened after the Nazis left? New York Times bestselling author Jenny Le Coat on why liberation didn't equal freedom for Jersey islanders after WW2.
What happens when ordinary people are faced with extraordinary choices?In her second blistering novel set on the Channel Island of Jersey,
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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50:24
Meet the formidable, feisty, factory sisterhood who went on strike and made history.
This July marks the 136th anniversary of the matchwomens strike at Bryant & May match factory in London's East End in 1888.Exposing the truth of the ‘poor waif matchgirl’ historian Louise Raw<...
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Season 2
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Episode 24
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1:15:02
“‘Forget that number and you don’t exist,’ the Kapo at Auschwitz told me.” 92-year-old Ivor Perl on surviving the horrors of the Holocaust.
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...
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Season 2
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Episode 23
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52:56
Meet the fur coat gangsters: Notorious Victorian girl gang who hid stolen jewellery in knickerbockers, carried razors wrapped in lace handkerchiefs and used a hatpin to blind anyone who crossed them
Swathed in luxurious fur coats, wearing diamond rings as a knuckledusters and hats to hide their stolen wares, Britain's most notorious all-female gang ruled the tenements of Waterloo and Elephant and Castle and earned the respect of Soho's mos...
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Season 2
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Episode 22
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31:51
On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, veteran Mervyn Kersh shares his extraordinary experience of the Normandy landings and his role in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
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 v...
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Season 2
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Episode 21
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53:38
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe: Reader, Bibliophile and Library Lover
98 years ago today, Norma Jeane Mortenson was born in California. She went onto become the legend that was Marilyn Monroe.No one knows more about Marilyn than writer Michelle Morgan who has dedicated her life to peeling back the lay...
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Season 2
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Episode 20
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58:16
The Women Who Ruled the East End: Remarkable Tales of Wartime London
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
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Season 2
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Episode 19
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1:20:20
85 years on from the end of the Spanish Civil War, author Maggie Brookes uncovers its hidden heroes. Plus the extraordinary war story she found in a lift!
Maggie Brookes is an ex-journalist, BBC TV producer and creative writing lecturer, now full-time novelist and poet. She was born in London and has been writing stories and poems since she was six. Maggie says: "The principal ...
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Season 2
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Episode 18
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55:26
99-year-old Holocaust survivor and US Army veteran George Leitmann on the emotional search for his father, the day he discovered a concentration camp and how he kept his cool interrogating Nazi war criminals.
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 famil...
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Season 2
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Episode 17
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49:14
Sent away by sea: the forgotten history of WWII’s ‘seaevacuees'. Meet the heroine at the heart of an astonishing survival story.
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 w...
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Season 2
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Episode 16
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54:23
Meet the Sugar Girls of Love Lane. New social history book set in Tate & Lyle's Liverpool factory in the sixties offers a glimpse of a long vanished era.
In The Sugar Girls of Love Lane, out today, Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, the authors of the Sunday Times bestseller
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Season 2
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Episode 15
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1:14:35
Meet the wartime librarians of Occupied Paris. Bestselling author of The Paris Library, Janet Skeslien Charles, on how reading gives us a privacy of the mind
‘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 in...
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Season 2
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Episode 14
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52:09
112 years ago today, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Historian Claes-Göran Wetterholm reveals some heartbreaking, untold personal stories…
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...
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Season 2
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Episode 13
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52:46
Meet the French librarian who trained as a Board Game Librarian and revolutionised her library in lockdown!
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.
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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31:58
Meet the librarians who rescued the books the Nazis burnt and plundered
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 ...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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1:16:35
Rounding up randy runaway sheep and delivering twin lambs whilst making gravy. Welcome to the multitasking world of the Devon Shepherdess.
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 Fa...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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54:32
Travel back to Victorian Brighton and discover a shadowy world of erotic tableaux, gangsters and music-hall artistes in Jacquie Bloese's atmospheric new novel
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. <...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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51:23
