JESS JENKINS was educated at Portsmouth High School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where she read Classics. Having trained as an archivist at Bangor, she worked in Warwick and Cardiff before joining the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland in 1990. She retired in 2022. During her career as an archivist, she has translated many documents in Medieval Latin and even the odd Classical Greek offering. She is widely experienced in translating documents which range from wills and title deeds to manorial rolls and ecclesiastical documents, both at a local and a national level.

Jess has a particular interest in the history of protest and is the author of ‘The Burning Question. The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage in Leicestershire’ (2008). A revised version, which incorporates the result of more recent research and continues the story through the war years, is due to be published shortly. She is also the author of ‘Honest Men But Destitute. The Plight of Leicestershire’s Framework Knitters’ (2005) and ‘Leicester’s Unemployed March to London 1905’ (2006). Other interests include the history of the anti-war movement in Leicester during the First World War and a book on Leicestershire’s conscientious objectors is planned. She has recently published an account of Leicestershire nurses in Serbia, 1914-1915. See publications.

Jess enjoys walking and wildlife watching. She is the proud keeper of six very raucous chickens and an irascible cat (the two conditions may be connected). With Robin and the rest of the family, she has played in the local village band for too long.

ROBIN P JENKINS was born in shoe-making Northamptonshire and educated in Norwich and London. He ‘did time’ at a variety of archival institutions before settling into a post as Assistant Keeper of Archives at the Leicestershire Record Office. More than thirty years later he shared the post of Senior Archivist at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland. He retired in 2022. Despite fears that there would be nothing to talk about at home, he married another archivist and added two sons to the family tree.

Robin has always been interested in history; with especial affection reserved for military matters, church monuments and Victorian politics. Holidays are therefore a mixture of trips to fortifications, tramps across battlefields and sojourns in lonely churches. For the last decade and more, he has played in his local village brass band.

Robin scribbles constantly. Mostly local history; including books on the Royal Leicestershire Regiment, Leicestershire and the Russian War, and photographic surveys of Leicestershire’s towns ‘then and now’. He is also the biographer of Major General Charles Blackader. At present, Robin is working on a number of projects, including Leicester’s Base Hospital in the Great War and a history of the ‘Tigers’ in South Africa. See publications.

For the most unsociable man in the county, Robin belongs to a surprisingly large number of clubs and societies. He is on the committee of the county Archaeological and Historical Society (and of his village band), is Archivist to the Rutland Local History Society and belongs to the Society for Army Historical Research, the Church Monuments Society and Monumental Brass Society.

Both popular speakers, Jess and Robin offer a wide range of talks and presentations. Together they have pioneered a new approach to the use of archive resources – writing and producing a number of costumed, dramatic presentations; with readings, music and even food and drink deployed to tell the stories of great events through local eyes.