In February 2023 a letter hit the world news cycle and captured imaginations across the globe. It was an apology written in Bath in 1916 at the height of the First World War that finally arrived in Crystal Palace in 2021.The letter, an apology from Christabel to Katie, intrigued people across the globe for weeks - who were these women? What was Christabel apologising for? Did Katie ever know she was sorry?
Drawing on news stories, the historical research of the Norwood Society and the research and imaginations of community theatre group Phoenix and the Wolf the full story of this intriguing tale is presented for the first time.
On a first reading Christabel's letter sparks so many theories, ideas and feelings as to the who's, hows and whys and we used that to play with wild ideas about who these women were and their relationship to one another. The play starts in a world of creative freedom inspired by the tiny amount of information the letter supplies, before the historical background and details starts to feed in and give us a more accurate representation of their world.
The conclusion of the historians was that we will never know what the apology was for, however, after digging deeper into the wider social and historical context of Christabel and Katie's lives and approaching the material as both detectives and story tellers, we feel we may have revealed far more than we could ever hope for.
Funny, moving, informative and engaging this is a history lesson like no other as well as an exploration of two periods of time connected by a letter. Are things really so very different a century after Christabel put pen to paper?
