Articles by The BNA

Michelle Higgs is a freelance feature writer, copywriter and author who has written a number of books on social history, particularly around the Victorian era. In late September, Michelle’s latest book Servants’ Stories: Life Below Stairs in Their Own Words will be released. It’s a collection of oral histories, memoirs and biographies from servants covering the period 1800 to 1950, and it includes some great articles found in the British Newspaper Archive. Michelle has kindly contributed this guest blog to showcase some

Wednesday, September 9th 2015 marks a significant milestone for Britain’s monarchy. It’s the day that Queen Elizabeth II become the longest ruling British monarch in history, breaking the record of her great grandmother Victoria. To commemorate this occasion, we’ve taken a look back on contemporary newspaper reactions to Victoria breaking the same record in 1897.A diamond jubilee was a brand new concept for the Victorian British, as no monarch had yet ruled for longer than 60 years, the closest being George III

Newspapers are valuable sources for researching historical events, most especially those of such national importance as a declaration of war.Register now and view 3 pages for FREEIn August of 1939, Britain and Poland signed an agreement of mutual assistance. This mean that were any foreign power to interfere with either country militarily, the other would rush to their aid. Days later, on September 1st, Germany crossed the Polish border under a flag of nationalism, on an invented crusade to liberate

The Anglo-Zanzibar War was a colonial conflict fought by the British during the late 19th century as part of the Scramble for Africa, the divvying-up of the continent carried out by European powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While countless wars were fought in the name of imperialism, the Anglo-Zanzibar War stands out thanks to one detail: it is the shortest war in recorded history. Estimates vary as to its actual length, but what is clear is that

HG Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, the story of a Martian invasion of Earth, has had many adaptations since being published in 1898. It’s unlikely that any of these adaptations has developed such an aura of myth and infamy as the Orson Welles radio adaptation of 1938, which was alleged to have caused mass panic across the United States. Conducted as a drama broadcast via wireless, the program went out uninterrupted for more than an hour and portrayed the events

Among the thousands of accounts of the First World War, you can find in the Archive, one publication stands out as a leading source of reportage and news surrounding the conflict: The Sunday Post. In June 1915, the Post printed the first-hand experiences of Private Harry Wells, a soldier in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. Private Wells tells his incredible story in this article, entitled ‘My Experiences in the Fighting Line from Mons to Ypres’. In it, we’re given an eyewitness

The bombing of civilian targets in Britain during the Second World War is now commonly referred to as ‘The Blitz’. The song ‘All Stick Together’ released by Ralph Butler in 1939 summarised the need for Britain to pull together as a nation against the threat of an invasion, and the ‘Blitz Spirit’ has gone down in history and is still invoked today in times of strife.  However, whilst the vast majority of the population may have been sticking together, there were

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon’s defeat by The Duke of Wellington and the Allied Forces finally concluded a nail-biting campaign during which the fate of Europe had hung in the balance, and ushered in nearly a century of relative peace. So now, as celebrations and commemorations abound, our minds have naturally turned to how the news broke two centuries ago…This wonderful extract from the Morning Post, Thursday 22 June 1815, paints a vivid picture of

100 years ago today, the worst rail disaster in British history occurred at Quintinshill near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.On May 22nd 1915, a devastating crash involving a total of five trains, killed 226 people and injured a further 246. The vast majority of those killed were territorial soldiers of the 1/7th (Leith) Battalion, Royal Scots, on their way to participate in the Gallipoli campaign.Disaster stuck when a troop train headed for Liverpool struck a passenger train that had been moved onto

This blog was submitted by Professor Brian Cathcart. Brian is a professor of journalism at Kingston University London. His book, The News From Waterloo: the race to tell Britain of Wellington’s victory, is published on 30 April by Faber & Faber, price £16.99How long did it take for the news of Waterloo to reach London? In this bicentenary year of the battle it is something we might expect to know, but the facts turned out to be surprisingly elusive and the newspapers