Session 4 - Letters

ListenListen

The Doc on One podcast is an award-winning RTE documentary series with documentaries as old as 1954. This session we will look at this podcast again but a different episode.

I Hope You Will Be Home Soon tells the story of a box of letters, written by six siblings from Laois, to their mother while she was in hospital in Dublin during the 1960s.

Click the link here to listen to this episode:

www.rte.ie/I-hope-you-will-be-home-soon

doc on one logo

ThinkThink

Having listened to the podcast , think about the questions below.

You might like to write down the answers.

1. What is the main source of information for this podcast? List 2 other sources you think the documentary makers used in telling this story?

2. Why did the children need to write letters to their mother?

3. The narrator in the podcast is a lady named Nicola Carr. How is she related to the mother in the story?

4. What age was the oldest child in the house and what age was the youngest child in the house at this time?

5. List 3 jobs the children had to do when their father was at work.

wooden box of old letters

Photo: RTE Doc On One

Write

Write

Do you have any old letters or postcards at home? Write a few sentences about them.

Include – who wrote them, when they were written, what they are about.

or

Imagine the year is 2071. One of your relatives finds a letter written by you to a friend in 2021.

Write that letter. What would you have said in it?

clocks

VisitVisit

Click on the link here to visit where the Delaney family were from in Laois – Google Maps.

Then click on the Satellite view and the Zoom in/Zoom out ( +/-) buttons to explore the area further. They are marked in red in the picture on the right.

If you want to try looking for somewhere else in Google Maps:

  1. Delete out Strahard, Clonad, County Laois from the top left hand corner.
  2. Type in any address you like.
  3. Press the looking glass icon or just press return to search.

google map image