Monica Cure’s new book, Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century, (published by Minnesota University Press) is a thoroughly absorbing exploration of the many ways in which postcards were a surprisingly disruptive new means of communication in the late nineteenth century, and continued to make waves for decades more, as a cultural and even political force. Postcards brought their disruptive power to fiction. They also played a grim part in recording lynchings in southern US states, as you’ll hear in the programme, and they had a role in the history of colonialism.

Listen to the interview.