Q&A Bonus Episode (Season 4)

Season 4, episode 13. Q&A Bonus episode. In which Ingrid answers questions from listeners and talks about the importance of the letters. We also look forward to the Season 5 featuring the last of Fred and Janie's letters (out in September 2023), and consider the future of the podcast. Support the show

Om Podcasten

Shortlisted for the International Women's Podcast Awards 2024, 2023 + 2022, and the Independent Podcast Awards 2023.  "Ingrid Birchell Hughes presents a charming take on family history via the love letters of her great-great-grandparents Fred and Jane, who exchanged 200 of them between their meeting and their marriage in Victorian Yorkshire. It’s a terrific insight into the lives of two witty working-class people and the times they lived in." — The Times.  This is a true story, a love story, a family drama, all contained within Victorian social history. Ingrid has both sides (extremely rare) of a correspondence spanning 1878 to 1882 that her great great grandparents sent one another. They were ordinary folk, trying to make their way in the world, first in the city of Sheffield and later in the town of Middlesbrough. There is a whole 'cast' of characters too from Fred's industrial innovator of a boss who advanced the steel making process - and took Fred with him, to Jane's sister Emma, who had her life splashed across the newspapers through no fault of her own. Against the background of the dramas going around them, Fred and Jane overcame family objection to their match and through their own will and determination, made a new life together.