Search the blog

This week at The Archive we are delighted to present a Northern Irish newspapers special, as we have updated a trio of our titles from Northern Ireland. We have also added 106,898 brand new pages over the last week alone, whilst we have added one brand new title from London.So read on to discover more about all of our new and updated titles of the week, and also to learn about the first ever Borstal, which was opened in the…

We’re starting this week off with a bang as we have added 218,828 brand new pages to The Archive, as we investigate the 1964 ‘Battle of Pier Gap,’ in which mods and rockers clashed in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. Meanwhile, we’ve added one brand new title to The Archive, the East Essex Advertiser and Clacton News, as well as making extensive updates to our existing titles from across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.From Croydon to Clacton, from South Bank to South Devon, read…

Mercedes Gleitze (1900-1981) was the first British woman to swim the English Channel, and the first person to swim the Straits of Gibraltar. In an amazing career that spanned the 1920s and 1930s, Mercedes captured the imagination of the British public and became a household name.Born to German parents in Brighton, Mercedes was one of three sisters. Skilled in languages, she moved to London where she worked as a secretary and stenographer. Whilst living in London she began swimming in…

This week we return from a publishing hiatus having added a mammoth 1,610,356 brand new pages to our Archive, and it’s an especially great week for Grimsby too, as we’ve added one brand new title for the Lincolnshire town, and also extensively updated the Grimsby Daily Telegraph. All of these additions mean we have now surpassed a landmark 65 million pages on The Archive.This week also sees the addition of a further three new titles to our collection, from Camberley, Luton…

This week at The Archive we have a South London special for you, with three brand new newspaper titles joining us from the likes of Croydon and Southwark. Meanwhile, we’ve added 360,986 brand new pages in total to our collection over the past seven days, with five brand new titles being welcomed to The Archive in all.We’ve not neglected our existing newspaper titles either. From Gloucester to Grimsby, from Plymouth to Port Talbot, from Stirling to Sevenoaks, we’ve updated 68 of…

A walk along Piccadilly in the black-out is one of the many queer experiences of this war. The once brilliant centre of London’s night life is now as dark as any forest, and indeed, like a forest, the darkness is full of rustlings and whisperings, of half-seen shapes, and of a sinister feeling of eager, but invisible, life.So began a Daily Herald article on blackout crime in London during the Second World War. With blackouts imposed across the United…

In the decade after the Second World War had come to an end, and indeed beyond, many communities across the United Kingdom were faced with very vivid reminders of the conflict: bomb sites, the country’s ‘war scars.’In this blog, we will examine how people in Britain lived alongside bomb sits in the 1950s, using newspapers taken from The Archive. We will explore how communities adapted to live beside bomb sites, and how they transformed them into gardens and playgrounds.…

This week you might just be able to witness steam coming off our presses, as we have added an impressive 343,381 brand new pages to The Archive, with 22 brand new titles joining us this week alone. Comprising of special interest titles devoted to music and the cinema, as well as to different spheres of employment, from postal work to pawnbroking, our new titles this week are an eclectic mix, comprising also the regional and the international, covering the latest from both…

Imagine yourself back in December 1925, with Christmas fast approaching, in London where:All the pavements are alive this week with purchasers moving in ceaseless procession from window to window as they search for the particular Christmas gift for the particular person who is to receive it. They wander down street after street, for London nowadays is the finest city in which to purchase a gift – humble, rich, or rare – that the world knows.It’s time for Christmas shopping, and there’s…

By November 1920, some ‘three millions of money‘ had been spent on ‘memorials of various kinds and designs…in the United Kingdom,’ as reported the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald. In today’s money, that’s roughly £87,000,000 – the equivalent of £2 donated by every person in Britain.The strength of the nation’s desire to remember their war dead is manifested in these memorials, as the population struggled to come to terms with the great losses suffered during the First World War, in which 744,000 men lost their…