Our homepage Catalogue Spotlight regularly features one record from the archive: a letter, a photograph or a newspaper cutting, and the story behind it. When a Spotlight moves on, it comes to rest here, newest first.
BD0010
LetterPeople/FamiliesSocial HistoryLocal GovernmentParis
A Letter from Paris
On Saturday 5 August 1939, Walter Preston wrote home to his “darling Wife & Son” from the Hôtel Moderne in Paris. He had been “treated A.1”: welcomed at Calais by the Lord Mayor and Council with a regimental band, and at Versailles “all the school children turned out with Flags & lined the Palace yard”. The hotel, he reported, was “a real Tip Top Hotel”, with a telephone by every bed. Four weeks later, Britain was at war.