Episode 3

Sophie Thompson reads from the letters of Frances Woodsford, a Bournemouth council worker, to wealthy American widower, Paul Bigelow, who she never met, written between 1949 and his death in 1961. They evoke life in postwar Britain, and are introduced by Woodsford herself, who is now in her 90s.

Frances and her mother take to the road in her temperamental old banger, Frances becomes a bona fide 'fire putter-outer' at Civil Defence classes and enjoys the spectacle of the coronation before a four-inch television screen.

Abridged by Doreen Estall.