Historical Letters

'As a diarist I have chronicled the time through which I have lived in meticulous detail: but all that is history. What matters now is the future for those who will live through it. The past is the past but there may be lessons to be learned which could help the next generation to avoid mistakes their parents and grandparents made. Certainly at my age I have learned an enormous amount from the study of history.' (Tony Benn)

Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French 18th-century art.

Italy, 1938: When Stella arrives in Florence, it’s love at first sight. She is wowed by the rolling hills dotted with olive trees, the buttermilk villas with shuttered windows and terracotta roofs that glow gloriously in the sunlight. Even the breeze holds the scent of freedom - freedom from England, where the shadow of her past haunted her.

When Chloe is given a peek at the script for an epic love story, she decides to take her destiny into her own hands and request an audition for the lead female role, Esther Kingsley. The compelling tale, inspired by family lore and a one-page letter from the colonial ancestor of scriptwriter Jesse Gates, just might break her out of this career-crippling rut. Jesse would rather write about romance than live through it after his past relationship ended in disaster. But once on-set together, the chemistry between Jesse and his leading lady is hard to deny.

A TIMELESS ROMANCE ANTHOLOGY: LOVE LETTER COLLECTION: Listeners will love this collection of six novellas - three contemporary and three historical - all with one thing in common: Romance.

As a barrister in 1818 London, William Snopes is a strong advocate who chooses to defend the poorer classes against the powerful. That changes the day a struggling heiress, Lady Madeleine Jameson, arrives at his door.

World War I is in full swing, and Abigail Hudson is doing her best to keep the home fires burning while her husband, Jacob, fights for king and country. She tries to balance family life along with running The General Store in their village of Abbington Pickets. Abigail, expecting their first child, is adjusting well to her new role until something unforeseen happens. Writing to Jacob brings comfort to Abigail. His letters always lift her spirits. Then, his letters stop. What happened? Is he missing? Captured? Or worse?

A seven-volume collection containing some of the most fascinating journals and letters to have been written in the last two hundred and fifty years, all performed in a dramatised setting.

Elle fut avant tout une star européenne de beauté et de vertu. Sa célébrité rehaussa l'importance de son salon au point que le nom de Récamier est devenu un symbole dans tous les salons. Chateaubriand fut son seul véritable amour.

Lady Ludmilla Windmere is mortified. The spinster extraordinaire has fallen in love with her best friend, and that cannot be. The problem? She hasn't met him. Not once. For they have only ever corresponded by letter. When she sets out to uncover his identity, her world shatters. For Addy turns out to be none other but London's worst rake. Adrian St. Addington is perturbed. The rakehell extraordinaire is developing a marked tendre for a spinster, and that cannot be. The problem? She might be mistaking him for someone he is not. Or, what is worse, know precisely who he is.

1951. Esther Durrant, a young mother, is committed to an isolated mental asylum by her husband. Run by a pioneering psychiatrist, the hospital is at first Esther's prison but soon surprisingly becomes her refuge. 2018. Free-spirited marine scientist Rachel Parker embarks on a research posting in the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast. When a violent storm forces her to take shelter on a far-flung island, she discovers a collection of hidden love letters.

After the death of Charles Senior, his son, also named Charles, compiled his father’s personal letters into a lesser-known book, which you are about to have the pleasure of listening to. This volume gives a unique perspective into the personal life of the Prince of Preachers. It shows that while he walked in revival his entire life, he was a man like any other. He was a man that had a family he dearly loved, got angry when people twisted his words, was often wracked with sickness and pain, and above all, loved Jesus.

Thirty-five Letters is a compilation of found letters written by a mother to her absent son. Spanning from 1972 to the spring of 1980, these letters offer insight into the world of a wife and mother who is trying desperately to keep her life on track and family intact.

In the summer of 1905, Katherine Arthur's mother arrives on her doorstep, dying, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget. When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie's husband, Frank, it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank.

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind.

Orphaned and alone in antebellum New Orleans, Fiona Riley promises a dying friend she will raise the woman's child as her own. But without a job and a roof over their heads, Fiona fears for their lives. When a letter arrives announcing that relatives in a bayou town are searching for their long-lost cousin, Fiona finds the answer to her prayers, even if it means deceiving others to survive. Emile Dugas knew she was lying the moment he set eyes on Fiona Riley, an Irish immigrant trying to pose as his distant Cajun cousin. But how could he resist?

Long, lonely years have passed for the crumbling Château Clement, nestled well beyond the rolling lavender fields and popular tourist attractions of Provence. Once a bustling and dignified ancestral estate, now all that remains is the château's gruff, elderly owner and the softly whispered secrets of generations buried and forgotten. But time has a way of exposing history's dark stains, and when American photographer Cady Drake finds herself drawn to the château and its antique carousel, she longs to explore the relic's shadowy origins.

Claire arrives at her new job as researcher at a grand English country house, nursing a broken heart. But tucked into the back of a long-forgotten drawer she finds a letter written in an elegant hand. It tells of a wartime secret about the beautiful Lady Violet – whose passionate affair with an Italian prisoner of war scandalised the village and ended in tragedy. Captivated, Claire promises to find Violet’s daughter, Tabitha, and reunite her with a priceless piece of her mother’s jewellery. With only the name of an Italian bakery, Pasticceria Mancini, to guide her, and the help of her handsome neighbour Jim, Claire travels to Tabitha’s last known location – Florence.

There's no such thing as privacy in the tiny village of Birdswing. Everywhere Dr. Benjamin Bones turns, someone is spying from a window, listening through a wall, or gossiping over a garden fence. "The birds sing in Birdswing," says the vicar, Father Cotterill; and in February 1940, this is more true than ever. Waiting for Hitler to make his move and turn this "Phony War" into the real thing, Ben's fellow villagers are desperate for a distraction.

Carl Brooke, a scholar of ancient Near Eastern languages, now spends his twilight years chronicling the adventures of his youth as a leading member of the Agora Society, a society dedicated to the betterment of man. Fans of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot will enjoy Carl Brooke and his Agora Society in these five very different cases.