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An exciting feature of the new British Newspaper Archive will be the advanced search capabilities that are coming to the site.Searching historic newspapers has always been a balancing actSearching historic newspapers has always been a bit of a tightrope walk. Search too narrowly and you miss the articles you need. Cast the net too wide and you’re wading through pages of irrelevant results. Throw in inconsistent spelling, occasionally damaged print, and the inevitable quirks of Optical Character Recognition…

This week at The Archive we are marking St Patrick’s Day with the addition of five brand new Irish titles, and updates to 29 of our existing Irish titles, as we delve into a potential Oscar Wilde work, where all is not as it seems. Furthermore, in all, we’ve added 215,303 brand new pages to our collection, as The Archive continues to grow.So read on to discover more about our new and updated titles of the week, and also to read…

This week at The Archive we’re delighted to welcome one brand new newspaper title to our collection, namely Yorkshire’s Hebden Bridge Times, alongside a total of 245,806 brand new pages. Meanwhile, from Derbyshire to Dunstable, from Eastbourne to Earlestown, from Thame to Todmorden, we have updated 15 of our existing titles from across England and Scotland.So read on to learn more about all of our new and updated titles of the week, as well as to discover more about poet laureate…

We’ve reached the extraordinary landmark of 72 million pages all now available to search on The Archive, as we welcome new title the Carrick Times and East Antrim Times to our collection, and celebrate the town of Carrickfergus’s links with poet and playwright Louis MacNeice. That’s not all, we’ve added 152,092 brand new pages to The Archive in all over the last seven days, with new pages joining publications from across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.So read on to discover more…

The work of poet, mystic and painter William Blake was largely unrecognised in his lifetime. The son of a dissenting hosier, Blake was born in London’s Soho in 1757, and was apprenticed to an engraver at a young age. Hostile to organised religion, he created an array of paintings and poetry, often inspired by his visions, before he passed away in 1827.In this special blog, we will take a look at the evolving attitudes to the art of William Blake. We…

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…

Long before Agatha Christie envisioned murder on the Orient Express, or before she wondered what might have taken place on the 4.50 from Paddington, murder, mystery and mayhem were already well established on the railways of Britain and beyond.The first victim of murder on British railways was 70-year-old Thomas Briggs. In this special blog, we will take a look at his story, as well as nine others sourced from the pages of our newspaper Archive, which tell the strange, the…

In this very special blog, Jessie O’Hara, from our sister site Findmypast, takes a fascinating look at astrology through the pages of our newspapers. Featuring articles all the way from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, she traces the development of attitudes towards astrology across three centuries, from scepticism to horoscopes being a mainstay of mainstream media.Register with us today and see what stories you can discoverBeliever or non-believer, agnostic or sceptic, there is no denying that…

We are taking a deep dive into the work of Una Marson.  Marson was one of Jamaica’s most influential poets, broadcasters, and activists.  She was a feminist pioneer and the first Black woman employed by the BBC.  She was also the first Black woman to have her play performed in the West End and the first Black woman to attend the League of Nations.  One blog post cannot do justice to her incredible career, but we hope to use The…

This week at The Archive we have added nearly 180 years of historic headlines, with 167,302 brand new pages joining us, spanning the years 1820 all the way through to 1999. We have four very exciting new titles joining us this week too, with additions to our collection of international newspapers, as well as to our Irish and national holdings.Read on to discover more about our new titles, the updates we have made to our existing publications, as well as one of the…