“I didn’t expect to be so moved. The way real letters, music, and history were woven together was extraordinary. It made me think differently about justice, courage, and what it means to stand up for what’s right.”

In a sea of political conflict and division, shouting, cynicism and fear, the post-war history English Cabaret shares in Dreams of Peace & Freedom is sometimes not an easy sell. But time and again, reactions like this one make it worth the telling.

Last year we toured extensively to celebrate the protections of ECHR in its 75th anniversary. Within days of the date of its signing it was the 80th anniversary of the opening of the first War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg. The connection between these two events goes beyond days and years. David Maxwell Fyfe, through whose eyes and words we tell our story played a major role at both, and for him were One Story. The Nazi crimes that were uncovered whilst he was a prosecutor at Nuremberg inspired the protections he drafted into ECHR.

Tom first spoke to Radio 4's The World Tonight about his grandfather's One Story on the anniversary of the opening  last November. It marked a punctuation mark in our continuing tour of performances which this year have taken us to Oxford's OFS and the Isle of Man to mark milestones in David's year at Nuremberg. Ian Cook, the organiser of our island show saw it at last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and says, 'it shouted at me.' His belief in the importance of One Story and two anniversaries is based on his fear that the values and ideals that shaped the post-war world are in danger of being forgotten.

This threat, that ECHR may be lost through a lack of understanding of what it is and what it does, is what drives us on. So we are continuing to perform Dreams of Peace & Freedom until the autumn. At the same time Songs of the People will continue its powerful social media storytelling of the year as it unfolds on Instagram, X and BlueSky by sharing letters David exchanged with his wife Sylvia during 1946. Follow @SongsotPeople to join in our One Story.