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Queen Victoria, the Queen’s gg-grandmother, was the only other UK monarch fortunate enough to celebrate a diamond jubilee, back in June 1897.We did a search for ‘diamond jubilee’ in the newspaper archive and found some fascinating stories, letters (not all of them complimentary, interestingly), images, exhibitions and adverts. To give you a flavour of the 1897 celebrations, we’ve posted some images from the newspapers of the day.If you’d like to see more, including a news report of the day’s celebrations,…

The ‘Fife Heritage Day’ takes place at the Lomond Centre in Glenrothes on Saturday 26 May.A large number of local and family history groups will be attending this event, so it promises to be a grand day out for all types of history researchers.Organised by the Workers Educational Association, the event runs from 10am to 4pm.All are welcome and admission is free.– http://www.weascotland-fife.org.uk/Index.asp?MainID=14527…

Unfortunately, currently we only have the option to print whole pages. This can be a little frustrating as the original image is scaled down to print in your home printer (usually A4) so will make it quite tricky to read!I have a few tips for you. . .The best way to retrieve a readable copy of a particular article at the moment is to:1.  Rather than selecting ‘Print’, choose to ‘Download’ the newspaper page image from the viewer.2.  Once you…

Readers in Australia might be interested to know that Audrey Collins of National Archives UK is doing a lecture tour of the Eastern States of Australia in June/July.A leading expert in genealogy, Ms Collins will be attending events in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.Listed below are the venues, dates and times.– Brisbane (Queensland Expo); Monday 25 to Wednesday 27 June.– Sydney, full-day seminar at Parramatta RSL Club, Corner of Macquarie and O’Connell Streets; Friday 29 June, 9am to 4.30pm.– Canberra, full-day…

The 217-day siege at Mafeking finally ended on 17 May 1900, British forces led by Colonel Mahon fought their way through to the town.When news of the relief reached the UK, there was a massive outpouring of joy (some writers say there was an outbreak of mass hysteria) on the streets. Indeed, the word ‘maffick’ emerged at the time to describe the type of spontaneous celebrations that took place in ON 17 May 1900.Many of the newspapers at the time dedicated the…

The archive contains some amazing stories about the sinking of the Titanic.In particular, ‘The Western Times’ of Tuesday 23 April 1912, contains dozens of fascinating and amazing stories about the final hours of the ill-fated ship. The likely reason why these reports are so powerful is because they are stories told by people who were there at the time.We’ve posted two stories below (just click on the images to read them) that capture both the farcical and tragic elements of…

We’ve received a fair few requests from many of you who would like to read the newspaper hand-out that we gave away at ‘Who Do You Think You Are? Live’.To download a copy of this Victorian-style newspaper, (PDF, 3MB), click on the link below:http://fh1-fmp-wp01.dun.fh/newsletter/images/wdytya-handout-2012.pdf…

Many members of the British Newspaper Archive Team are obsessively following the Brian Cox ‘Stargazing’ programme that’s running on BBC2 at the moment.Suitably inspired by the ‘Muse of Starstruckness’, we went looking in the newspaper archive for historical stories about discoveries in astronomy in the 18th and 19th Centuries.And what was the result of our searches? Well, there appear to be as many stories in the archive about astronomical discoveries are there are stars in the sky. Well,…

It’s exactly 100 years since Captain Robert Scott and his comrades started their ill-fated return journey to the ‘Terra Nova’, after reaching the South Pole.To mark the centenary of this historic episode, we’ve created a gallery of old newspaper stories that look at the tragedy from various viewpoints.To read these stories, just go to our Facebook page.http://www.facebook.com/TheBritishNewspaperArchive…

With so many excellent TV programmes, newspaper/magazine articles and new biographies about the life and art of Charles Dickens, it can sometimes be difficult to think up a new angle to study the life of Boz from.Luckily, the British Newspaper Archive contains 100s of stories about Charles Dickens – ranging from reviews of his novels and his reading tours to his love for ‘Grip’, his talkative and clownish pet raven (and muse for the raven in ‘Barnaby Rudge’).So as…