POSTCARD FROM THE PAST

'The second day Ian smashed a flowerpot. Bobby is not having anything to do with us.' 'Plenty of hippies on the pier, but they behaved.' 'Can't say we're having a good time.' 'I'm wasting time by writing to you.' 'A crab bit my toe.' - written on the back of a postcard from LONDON! 'If it doesn't stop raining soon I shall have webbed feet.' And a picture of Hotel Paguera in Spain with the handwritten message on the reverse 'If I was here I'd be having a superb time.' On our holidays in the 1960s and 70s we sent stacks of sun-bleached postcards from leaky caravans in Skegness and chintzy guesthouses in Weston-Super-Mare, gossiping about our relatives, spilling the beans on summer romances, and providing a constant stream of weather reports. Tom Jackson has gathered the funniest, weirdest and most moving messages from his vast postcard archive, transforming the throwaway scribblings of a generation into a symphony of voices and tantalising glimpses into the past written from rainy campsites, over grim hotel breakfasts, on sweltering beaches and in windy seaside carparks. A laugh-out-loud tribute to the British character. 167pp, colour postcards on every page, softback.