Catherine Nixey
speaker
98 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 6 Aug
Catherine Nixey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The first postcard was sent in 1840.
A British novelist called Theodore Hooke sent a card through the post to himself in London.
This card featured a picture and a lame joke.
This card set the standard for what would become a great holiday industry.
The advantages of these postcards was clear.
They lifted a physical burden from postal services.
A single leaf of card was far lighter and cheaper to transport than the threefold thickness of a letter in an envelope.
And they lifted a literary burden from the writer.
Like teenagers turning to text, Victorians relished the limits imposed on their prose.
Soon hundreds of billions were in circulation.
Britons, with their empire, were particularly keen.
As one historian puts it, postcards were the first worldwide social network.
Postcards changed the way the world was seen.
Their visual style, those palm trees, sunsets, saturated color, is as recognizable as a Greek vase.
And like a Greek vase, they were parodied.
Oh, no, never.
They don't mind them?
If they don't want them, they buy a view.
Cheap and cheerful, postcards gave tourists an invaluable sense of place and gave intellectuals an even more invaluable sense of superiority.
The author George Orwell noted comic postcards' appearance of overpowering vulgarity and their general hideousness.
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