FEW things in life are as enduring as true love. But for many, such a thing exists only as a fairytale; something deeply sought but rarely found.

But for one Herefordshire couple, true love triumphed over war and separation.

Now, letters entrusted to the couple’s daughter on the premise that they be transcribed only posthumously, are beginning to uncover a fairytale of their own.

Brian Thomas was an orthopaedic surgeon in Hereford from 1947 until 1975 – living in the county until his death in 1982 – and met his future wife Katie Walker in 1945 in Graz, Austria.

Circumstances forced an 18-month separation but during that time they wrote to one another daily. Those letters were given to Loraine Fergusson before her mother died three years ago.

She began transcribing her parents’ letters last month, posting them on her blog which has received more than 2,000 hits already.

Loraine said: “Mother got very frail before the end of her life. I knew she had the letters – they were always kept in the bottom drawer.

“About six years ago I recorded her early experiences before she went to Austria and visited all the places she went to during her time abroad including Naples and Rome, as well as the bridge where my father proposed.

“I eventually got to Graz, where they met and after that there was nowhere left for me to go. It was just extraordinary.

“Mum, who was in her 80s by then couldn’t understand why I was so interested in her life.”

After her mother’s death, Loraine was too upset to transcribe the documents but now she has started she said it is very clear that her parents were always deeply in love.

Loraine said: “They never seemed to get insecure or have any issues, despite being so far apart.

“My father died when I was 29 but there was never any doubt they were still madly in love with each other.

“As a child you take your parents’ relationship for granted but I never heard them argue and they were always laughing – they cracked each other up, even towards the end.”

Brian Thomas was a surgeon, posted abroad in 1942, while Katie was working in central supplies before the couple met and fell in love in Graz, Austria.

They moved to Hereford in 1947 when Brian took up his post as orthopaedic surgeon in the city and, as orthopaedics was a new medical branch, he was the only one at Hereford General Hospital for 15 years.

Brian died in 1982, aged 72, while Katie passed away in 2009.

Loraine writes on her blog that the letters are “not just a touching correspondence between two people who are clearly in love, they are also an extraordinary window onto life at the end of the Second World War as the men and women of Britain put their lives back together and strove to fulfil the dreams they had of a happy future”.

Loraine now lives in Blewbury, Oxfordshire, and is the author of two novels – The Archivist and The Golden Hand.

Her brother Professor Peter Thomas followed their father’s footsteps into orthopaedics.

She said of transcribing the remaining letters: “I think what’s exciting is that I don’t know what is in them, and this story – that my father was married and had to get a divorce – makes it so exciting.

“It’s something that strikes close to a lot of people’s hearts. It’s from a different era.”

To follow Loraine’s blog, go to withlovefromgraz.blogspot.co.uk.