A forgotten bundle of love letters sent to French sailors more than 260 years ago – but never before opened or read – has been discovered among British naval archives, revealing intimate details of 18th-century marital and family life.
The remarkable stash of more than 100 letters was discovered by chance at the National Archives in Kew by Renaud Morieux, professor of European history at the University of Cambridge, who asked archivists if they could be opened so he could read them for the first time.
