A YOUNG woman's fascinating Second World War diary has been transformed into a new podcast series.
Lorna Lloyd began her diary on September 1, 1939, the day the war broke out.
Touching on local, national and international events, the diary covers subjects including evacuees in Malvern, Lloyd's own war work making ration books and the bombing of Britain's cities and towns.
The then 25 year-old, who lived in Somers Road, was born near Bristol in 1914.
She studied English at Girton College, Cambridge, then worked for a short time as a schoolmistress at the County High School in Stourbridge and the Royal School Bath.
She fell ill in her mid-20s and died tragically young in Malvern in 1942 from cancer and heart failure.
Her archive of unpublished writing was rediscovered by Hazel Hall in 2019.
Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war podcast series was created by a team at Edinburgh Napier University’s school of computing.
The actors are Bethany Ray (Lorna Lloyd), Richard Godden (newsreader), Katherine Stephen (announcer), and David Monteath (Theo Lloyd).
The series will be launched at a free event at Great Malvern Priory in Malvern, Worcestershire on Tuesday, May 24.
At the launch event, curator of Malvern Museum of Local History Faith Renger will give an illustrated talk about Lorna’s life and Bethany Ray will read extracts from her great-great aunt’s war diary and poetry.
The team from Edinburgh Napier University will also speak about the process of bringing Lloyd’s writing together in audio format.
Professor Hazel Hall said: "I first posted the diary entries online between 2019 and 2021 at https://www.blipfoto.com/LornaL as a personal project.
"I am really grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the work to transform this content into a podcast series.
"We will now investigate how presenting a historical archive in a new format makes a difference to the ways in which people engage with it."
Tickets for the launch event are available free of charge at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lorna-lloyds-diary-of-the-war-podcaslaunch-event-tickets-307900246927
The podcast episodes will be downloadable from the Malvern Museum website, https://malvernmuseum.co.uk from the afternoon of May 24.
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