The Paston letters and papers comprise the largest archive of medieval family correspondence in the UK. They provide vivid insights into life in late medieval England and include eye-witness accounts of legal disputes, political conflicts, and in-fighting in fifteenth-century Norfolk in the turbulent decades of the Wars of the Roses. They also describe, at first hand, forbidden love affairs and clandestine marriages, family arguments and neighbourhood conflicts, battles and violent assaults, sieges and kidnappings, fear of plague and sudden deaths. The family matriarch, Margaret Paston, with the help of her scribes, was the most prolific letter writer in the collection. Her letters provide a unique woman’s perspective on life in fifteenth-century England. This project focuses on around twenty letters Margaret wrote across her lifetime, from the years immediately following her marriage to those leading up to her death. The events described in these letters become the starting point for a micro-biography – looking in detail at Margaret’s life at that moment – and for a broader exploration of social and cultural history.