Wish you were here...

We look back at the changing style and uses of the postcard: a colourful industry that illustrates a social history of Britain like no other art form

- Neil Jones

The Tower of London, Blackpool’s piers, cheeky seaside cartoons: even in our age of selfies and Instagram, choosing and sending postcards still remains an essential ritual for many holidaymakers. They may even write those golden words: “Wish you were here…”

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first official postcards issued by the British Post Office (1870): buff-coloured rectangles pre-printed in purple with a halfpenny stamp and the royal coat of arms, and with space for an address to be added; the reverse was left blank for your message.

While some had reservations about the “open” nature of such correspondence, including that servants might pry on news, the cards clearly offered benefits: postage cost half that of a letter and with deliveries as frequent as four times a day in towns, they were ideal (before the ubiquity of telephones) for simple communications like: “See you this afternoon at teatime.”

It had been 30 years since the introduction of the UK’s Uniform Penny Post for letters, and the very first plain postcard was actually produced in 1869 in Austria-Hungary, with much of the early development of subsequent picture-postcards happening on the Continent too. But Britain soon caught up and in 1902 even pioneered the “divided-back” postcard that allowed for a message to be written to the left of the address and stamp. Until then, senders, obliged to leave the address side for the address alone, had had to squeeze their messages below (or sometimes across) pictures on the front.