Blog tour: From the Library with Love (podcast review)

Welcome to the blog tour for the podcast From the Library with Love by Kate Thompson!

More about the podcast…

Wonderful, transformative things happen when you set foot in a library. In 2019, Kate Thompson uncovered the true story of a forgotten Underground library, built along the tracks of Bethnal Green Tube tunnel during the Blitz. As stories go, it was irresistible and the result was, The Little Wartime Library, her 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, the author set herself 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!

Her research led her to librarians with over fifty years of experience, 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 said: 'If you want to see the world, don't join the Army, become a librarian!'

Here is the link to the podcast site, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/from-the-library-with-love/id1705546837

More about the author…

Kate Thompson an award-winning journalist, ghostwriter and novelist who has spent the past two decades in the UK mass market and book publishing industry.

Over the past eight years Kate has written eleven fiction and non-fiction titles, three of which have made the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list.

My impressions…

What a wonderful idea! As part of the blog tour, I am going to tell you about one podcast episode, but please do yourself a huge favour and listen to all of them. I am making my way through the entire back catalogue, which truly makes this the blog tour that keeps on giving!

So, the episode I chose is titled: On National Letter Writing Day, meet the woman who collects forgotten letters.

The summary: Letter writing is a dying art, but fortunately, there are some wonderfully creative souls around resurrecting old love letters and breathing life into them. One of them is Liz Maguire, the love letter collector and originator of https://www.fleamarketloveletters.com, originally from Washington D.C. and now living in Dublin.

From her first acquisition as a teenager of a set of vintage love letters from a flea market, Liz now holds a collection of over 1600 letters. She told me, ‘Letters capture the essence of what it is to be living through history. In attics, and drawers and shoe boxes under beds there are hundreds of stories waiting to be told.’ Here we delve into her unique archive…

Before I tell you more, be warned that you will want to click on that link, and that, in so doing, you will lose track of at least a week of your life! If you’re ok with that… I was drawn to this episode because I love letters and letter writing. Growing up, I had so many pen pals that a day spent without sending or receiving a new letter was rare. Juggling children, work and everything else that a grown-up is supposed to do doesn’t leave much time for sitting down with pen and paper these days, but I still write the occasional missive to friends, just because! There is something warming about finding an old letter tucked into a book or amidst some official-looking documents. As you take it out of its envelope, you’re already on a journey. Now, imagine that, instead of walking down your own memory lane, you pick up a series of letters written by someone you don’t know to another person you don’t know. You will feel excited as you don’t know what you’re about to read. It will be like you’re about to meet a new friend, who you might like… or not. And then? The world of emotions is your oyster! Imagine then that you re-read these letters or share them with others. It will be like meeting old friends, visit known places. To add more layers to this experience, consider that some of these letters will have been written in a decade, or perhaps even a century, different from yours. Imagine the turn of phrases that will seem old-fashioned to you but were not at the time of writing, and all the details of a daily life that you can only recognise from books or films set in a bygone era. Isn’t this all fascinating?

The conversation between Kate and Liz flows in such a way that you would listen to them chat non-stop. They clearly have a lot in common, and their enthusiasm for the topic at hand is evident. I wouldn’t say no listening to a second episode on this subject!