My Love Letter Time Machine - Victorian History
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.
My Love Letter Time Machine - Victorian History
Trailer - Bringing 200 Victorian letters to life
Janie and Fred met on a woodland walk in 1878, they left behind 200 love letters. 140 years later their great great grandaughter, Ingrid Birchell Hughes, brings their letters and the world of Victorian Yorkshire to life. Escape to another time and get caught up in the real life dramas of two ordinary but delightful people through their back and forth conversation, and talk a look at little snippets of social history.
