Dear Mr Bigelow

Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting collection of weekly letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Public Baths in Bournemouth to a wealthy American widower in New York. Frances Woodsford and Paul Bigelow never met yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline. We follow Frances’s trials with her ghastly boss Mr Bond; the hilarious weekly Civil Defence Classes as the Cold War advances; her attempts to shake off an unwanted suitor and life at home with her mother and her charming ne’er-do-well brother. Sparked with comic genius the letters provide a unique insight into post-war England and the growth of an extraordinary friendship.