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A new collection of letters, notes and other documents from people who made history.

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Letters, postcards, notes and telegraphs from the great and the good, the notorious and the downright wicked, shine a spotlight on a range of historical events and movements providing an immediate link to the immediate and much more distant past.
The book includes letters from: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lucien Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Nelson Mandela, Caitlin Thomas, Mary Whitehouse, Gandhi, George Washington among many others. Subjects covered include suffragette disturbances, obscene publications, relations between international leaders, child emigration including the Kindertransport.
The book features 55 letters, each with a 600-word essay, and a 3000 word introduction. There are 150 images in the book: 55 of the letters themselves, and a further 95 supplementary images.

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In Their Own Words 1: The reader is guaranteed a different and compelling story every time, making this book something to treasure. It´s like holding a piece of history in your hands. All About History magazine

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This title is authored by a group of specialist archivists at The National Archives, each of whom has a particular area of expertise in a different aspect of the past.

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