ON August 28, 1944, Esther Kingston - a young schoolteacher on a brief holiday to the Yorkshire coast at Flamborough - wrote a long 'lettercard' to her cousin Tom Lofthouse.

Tom was an Australian serving with Bomber Command at RAF Driffield - a warrant officer at the time Esther wrote to him, though he was soon to be commissioned as a flying officer.

Esther wrote her letter on the back of a 'Sepia Gravure Lettercard' - a long roll of interlinked postcards with room to write on the back.

It was a gossipy letter, written from lodgings at North End, Flamborough, which described the weather and walks along the coast. "We have been in the sea twice since we were here, Saturday and Sunday mornings at North Landing, which is rather a pretty bay as you can see from the pictures," Esther wrote. Even here, however, the war made itself felt. "Today... has been very windy,"Esther wrote. "We haven't bathed, but we had a walk this afternoon along the cliffs - we turned back by notices warning us of mines."

Esther describes a train journey to Wakefield - where she had trouble getting off the train because it overshot the platform. "However, two RAF men helped me to jump down - what a jump!" she wrote. She also describes British aircraft on training runs over the North Yorkshire coast.

"We've had lots of planes over while we've been here and seen the fighters and bombers practising together," she wrote. "Today we saw a bomber bombing over the sea."

We don't know what happened to Esther. But Tom survived the war, and returned to Western Australia. He took with him a collection of 40 or so postcards from Britain which he had collected while on leave from Bomber Command. There are some of York, others from Leeds where he visited family, and yet more from various Yorkshire places such as Driffield, Beverley, Harrogate - and that 'lettercard' from Flamborough his English cousin had sent him.

Years later, after his death, Tom's daughter Pat was going through the things in his garage and found them.

Herself a historian, she brought them with her when she came to York - which is how they have ended up in the hands of The Press.

Esther's letter and the postcards themselves provide a glimpse of life in wartime Britain.

'This is an All British Production', a tiny printed message on the front of Esther's lettercard says.

Many of the other postcards, meanwhile, have little patriotic sayings printed on the back, designed no doubt to inspire confidence and defiance of the enemy in those who read them.

"We shall continue steadfast in faith and duty till our task is done," says one, attributed simply to 'The Prime Minister'. "Let us all strive without failing in faith or in duty," says another, also ascribed to Churchill.

Imagine Theresa May trying to tell us all to do that today...

Stephen Lewis