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Fittingly for our brand new platform, this week we are delighted to welcome five brand new titles to The Archive, with a total of 261,496 pages joining us in all. That's not it either, from across the UK and Ireland and even further afield, we've updated 46 of our existing titles. And as we voyage into these new waters, using our brand new shipping title, we explore the launches of some notable liners and merchant vessels from the late 19th and early…

This week at The Archive we are delighted to welcome a brand new title from the sunny south coast, the Bournemouth Times and Directory, as we take a moment to remember the devastating Bournemouth Blitz. In all, over the last seven days, we’ve added 366,686 brand new pages to our collection, whilst we’ve updated 25 of our existing titles from across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.So, from Buckingham to Burnley, from Dingwall to Driffield, from Mid Sussex to Mid Ulster, read…

Here at The Archive, we love to learn of the discoveries you have made through our newspaper pages, and how you have used them, whether they have influenced novels, or provided information for dissertations. We were incredibly grateful, therefore, when crime writer and athletics historian Peter Lovesey contacted us with his account of sixty years of researching newspapers. From accessing historical newspapers in their original form, to scrolling through microfilm reels, and finally to searching newspapers digitally on the British…

With spooky season now upon us, we thought we’d scour the pages of The Archive to find some of the most spine-chilling ghost stories ever published in our newspapers.So settle in and prepare to be scared by tales of ghostly armies, inexplicable apparitions and portents from the afterlife, all of which have been featured in the pages of the newspapers to be found on The Archive.Want to learn more? Register now and explore The Archive1. An Army of…

In March 1935 the seaside resort town of Bournemouth was shaken by a sensational murder. Retired architect Francis Mawson Rattenbury, aged 67, was found dead at his home, Villa Madeira, on Manor Road. Accused of his murder were his younger wife Alma Rattenbury, and her lover, 18-year-old gardener George Stoner.This case would end in further tragedy, and in this special blog, using pages from the British Newspaper Archive, we explore how murder came to the genteel town of Bournemouth in the…

This week we have added 48,988 pages to The Archive, with new pages covering both England and Scotland. We’re delighted to have updated four of our Scottish titles, with additions spanning the years between 1879 to 1981. We’ve also updated the Newcastle Journal, the Manchester Evening News, the Lichfield Mercury, the Wells Journal, and finally the Reading Evening Post.One of our Scottish titles to be updated this week is the Aberdeen Evening Express, to which we have added the years 1939-1945 and 1980-1981.Eighty…

With Halloween approaching, we wanted to see what we could find related to the topic of hauntings in The British Newspaper Archive.Of children and hauntingsOften the origins of a haunting myth are rooted in death and loss. Sometimes the myth grows and morphs to such a point where its origin is indeterminate. Other times, the sad truth of its origin is unexpectedly revealed, as with the ‘grim discovery’ at a ‘haunted house’ in 1921, reported in The Scotsman.This…

As we welcome a new month, we at the Archive take the opportunity to delve into historical events that have occurred in the month of May over the years.Lewis and ClarkOn 14 May 1804, Lewis and Clark departed St Louis on their expedition west. It was the first American expedition to explore the western half of the United States. The expedition was ordered by President Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase to, in part, map this newly acquired territory. The journey…

Recently, several people have asked us when the newspaper library at Colindale will be closing and the print newspapers moving to Boston Spa. In June, the British Library confirmed that the Colindale site in North London will close on Friday 8 November 2013.As many of you will already know, the content on the BNA website comes from the British Library’s amazing newspaper collection at Colindale – which contains over 750 million pages from local, regional and national newspapers, as well as periodicals. But…

The Lusitania arrived in New York on 13 September 1907, after completing the crossing of the Atlantic in 5 days and just under two hours – thus just missing out on ‘the Blue Ribbon’, then held by ‘The Deutschland’.To mark the day, here is a newspaper report about this historic event.Read our blog post about the sinking of the Lusitania…