THIS year marks 500 years since the postal service was formalised.

Throughout its history, the postal service has given people the chance to share accounts of momentous political events, or of tiny, intimate, but life-changing family events.

As a historian, reading these letters give me the greatest pleasure.

That’s why I’m working with Royal Mail to ask people to hunt out long-forgotten letters that might help to re-tell history through the words of the people who lived it.

If you find something brilliant in your own family letters, you can upload it either through http:// www.royalmailgroup.com/ lettersofourlives or by sending a photocopy to Freepost RTSA-BEGAAAZB, Letters of our lives, Riverside House - Riverside Estate, Sir Thomas Longley Road, Medway City Estate, Rochester, ME2 4FN to be documented as part of this fascinating project.

I’m champing at the bit to start piecing together a hidden social history of our country.

Lucy Worsley TV historian and chief curator Historic Royal Palaces