The Juliet letters

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Juliet Club is in Verona, Italy, a place known throughout the world as being the city of love.

The club has been replying to mail addressed to Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, Juliet since the early 1990s.

The story of the Juliet letters started in the 1930s when the guardian of what is known as Juliet’s tomb began gathering the first letters people left at the grave and answering them.

The task was taken on by the Juliet Club which was founded by Giulio Tamassia in 1972. His daughter, Giovanna, tells Gill Kearsley that thousands of love letters from around the world are each given a personal response.

(Photo: Letters to the Juliet Club. Credit: Leonello Bertolucci/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Ronson and I'm an invisible enemy.
0:05.0	That changed people psychologically.
0:08.0	Words can be dangerous if you don't know the context.
0:12.0	We were told to stay at home.
0:15.0	We lived with an invisible enemy,
0:17.0	with only the internet for company.
0:19.0	That changed people psychologically.
0:21.0	I'm John Ronson, and I'll be unerthing the roots of the culture
0:24.8	wars that engulfed us then and still do now.
0:28.8	The award-winning podcast, Things Fell Apart, Returns.
0:33.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	Hello, you're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Jill
0:46.4	Kursley.
0:49.7	I'm taking you to Verona in Italy, known throughout the world as being the city of love.
0:56.0	It's the setting for William Shakespeare's famous play Romeo and Juliet that tells the story of
1:02.0	Star-Cross lovers from warring families.
1:05.0	But this is a story of hope, of tradition, of love, and of letters written to Juliet.
1:15.0	Juliet, who may or may not have existed, but if she did, died 800 years ago.
1:20.6	Juliet who Shakespeare wrote about and lived in Verona, the Juliet who, it seems 10,000 people
1:26.6	write to every year.
1:28.4	That's from the BBC Radio Archive from 2015.
1:32.1	The letters to Juliet are one of the most important and real things in all
	...

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