Time Travellers and the joy of sharing quirky stories

Part of the joy of research is finding surprises in archives, newspapers, autobiographies and ephemera.
Often these stories don't fit the narrative of whatever writing task is at hand at that moment and so get forgotten, but since 2017 I've been thrilled to give many of them a wider audience  on BBC Radio 3's Time Traveller series - broadcast every morning just after 10am as part of the live Essential Classics programme on Radio 3 and then subsequently collated into themes for the Time Traveller podcast. Through this series I've been able to tell over twenty stories from the past about magic, art, sport, theatre, music, dance, and of course the suffrage campaign.

It's been a treat to dig out curious stories and then research them in more detail for the Time Travellers slot. It's also been great to get feedback from listeners who have emailed me after hearing a story, and from fellow broadcasters as a few have made it onto BBC Radio 4's Pick of the Week programme. The most exciting thing was to have a suffrage story on the air everyday during the week of the centenary celebrations of the passing of the 1919 Representation of the People Act last year - a fantastic way to share the variety of my research with a new audience.

If you would like to hear some of my pieces then do click the links below which will take you to various episodes of the Time Travellers podcast... and do check on my News page for upcoming broadcasts.

• The 1911 census boycott in the Aldwych Rinkeries - in the Past Pastimes episode
• The 'Australian mermaid' Annette Kellerman - in the Beside the seaside episode
• The experimental colour wards for shell shocked soldiers in WW1 - in The Power of Paint
• The Tudor Labradoodle - in Message in a Bottle
• Houdini and a Yorkshire magician - in Smoke and Mirrors
• A Victorian drama school by the sea - in A brief history of youth
• The first woman on the ice - in Sporting endeavours
• A 220 year old tradition at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane - in Treading the Boards
• The martial art of Sherlock Holmes - in A Time Traveller's Dictionary​