Peter Congreve talks about Philately and Social History

Michael Cortese and Charles Epting have interviewed Peter Congreve in Episode 61 of their series Conversations with Philatelists. Peter Congreve is an Australian, very active on Twitter as Peter (@stampden), with a passion – among others – for birds, genealogy, postal and social history.

“Communication happens between people and not between postage stamps”, says Peter Congreve, then adds: “when you’re holding a cover, you’re holding a piece of primary source; social history documentation, that has the capacity to tell us something about the people involved, the social and cultural period in which they lived, and perhaps something about us. Quite often social histories tend to be limited by virtue of the material that is available to the famous and the infamous, so they tend to be naturally skewed to that direction. But, through letters and covers and postcards it allows us to reconstruct the lives of those who are not any of those things, famous or infamous, it allows the stories of, what of a better term, of the common man”.

You can watch Episode 61 here: https://www.philatelypodcast.com/episodes/ep-61-peter-congreve-philatelist-as-social-historian