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We’re rounding off the month of May at The Archive with six brand new titles, as we take you from the flourishing seaside resort of Rhyl and into the heart of the Victorian tricycle craze, remembering those who helped cement its place in motoring history. This week we have added 360,654 brand new pages, and have updated twenty-five of our pre-existing titles.Country Life | 18 July 1963So keep reading to uncover hidden secrets buried within our new titles, and to learn more…

Today is a momentous day in the history of the British Newspaper Archive – we have reached 100 million newspaper pages – all available for you to search at the click of a button. Indeed, to be accurate, we now have over 100 million newspaper pages for you to enjoy, as we tipped over this incredible figure with the addition of 206,718 brand new newspaper pages this week.Our 100 millionth newspaper page comes from none other than the wonderfully historic Dundee Courier. Read on to…

We are positively bustling with new titles this week, with five brand new titles for you to explore, including fashion favourite Le Follet. Meanwhile, we’ve added a grand total of 247,238 brand new pages to The Archive over the last seven days, with updates to eleven of our existing titles from across the United Kingdom and beyond.So read on to discover more about our new and updated titles of the week, and also to learn about, through the stunning pages…

This week at The Archive we have added two brand new titles to our collection – the Blackpool Gazette and the Scunthorpe Star – as we’ve added 304,982 brand new newspaper pages in all over the last seven days. Meanwhile, from Chichester to Cleckheaton, from Fraserburgh to Frome, from Pembrokeshire to Perthshire, we’ve updated 34 of our existing titles from across the United Kingdom.So read on to discover more about all of our new and updated titles of the week, and also to…

We’ve added 315,856 new pages to The Archive this week, taking our total page count up to a mind-boggling 85,317,265. We’re delighted to welcome two new English newspaper titles – the Darlington Telegraph and the Sandwell Chronicle – to our collection.We’ve also updated 15 of our existing titles, so there are fascinating new pages from Belfast to Biggleswade for you to discover.Read on to learn more about this week’s new and updated titles, and uncover a spooky story or two from within this…

Another week here at The Archive and we’re delighted to introduce yet another brand new newspaper title to our collection, Yorkshire’s Pudsey & Stanningley News. The newness does not stop there, however, as we’ve added 206,336 brand new pages to The Archive all together over the last seven days. Meanwhile, from Ballymena to Barnoldswick, from Wolverhampton to Worthing, from Halifax to Hartlepool, we’ve updated 25 of our existing titles from across the UK and Ireland.So read on to discover more about our…

In this special guest blog, David Musgrove, content director for BBC History Magazine and HistoryExtra, considers the amazing life of the now-forgotten Victorian showman, athlete, and wheelbarrow pedestrian Bob Carlisle, and how his clever manipulation of newspapers marks him out as a 19th-century influencer.Did the Victorian period have influencers? Yes, but rather than using social media and camera phones, they employed letter-writing and wheelbarrows.I’ve been researching the story of a forgotten 19th-century minor celebrity whose life was widely…

In December 1920 the world’s first illustrated weekly news magazine the Illustrated London News delved into the ‘curiosities and ingenuities‘ of the Patent Office, featuring some of Britain’s most unusual rejected patents.Illustrated by the publication’s own artist W.B. Robinson, the Illustrated London News presented a series of the bizarre designs that had been submitted to the Patent Office, but had since ‘lain dormant.’We at The Archive were keen to delve into our collection’s cabinet of curiosities, and these rejected…

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…

Leslie Deakin, writing for The Tatler in November 1951, explains how ‘Christmas has its own traditions in games,’ and so, in this special blog, we are going to look at 20 Christmas party games from years gone by, all taken from our newspapers.From the familiar games that we know and love today, to those that have fallen out of fashion, we will explore 20 different Christmas party games that may or may not provide you with some inspiration for your celebrations this…