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This week at The Archive we have a smorgasbord of historical Shropshire newspapers for you to enjoy, with the addition of eight brand new titles from the West Midlands county, alongside updates to eight of our existing Shropshire titles. We are delighted to be spoiling you with new pages this week, which number 288,672 in all, as we welcome a total of fifteen brand new titles, alongside updates to 43 of our existing titles.So read on to discover more about our…

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…

As the 2024 Paris Olympics begin, we at the British Newspaper Archive could not help but look back at the 1924 Paris Olympics, with the same city playing host to the summer Olympic Games exactly one hundred years ago. Paris had also hosted the Olympics in 1900, and so this year will be the third time that the city hosts the iconic sporting tournament.And the 1924 Paris Olympics would prove an iconic one for Britain, with gold medal wins by sprinters Harold…

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 1900 women were allowed to compete in the modern summer Olympic Games for the very first time. The first woman to win an individual gold medal at the summer Olympic Games was British tennis player Charlotte Cooper Sterry, winner of five Wimbledon titles, on 11 July 1900 in Paris.Want to learn more? Register now and explore The ArchiveAnd so, in this special blog, we will take a look at the achievements of the likes of Charlotte Cooper Sterry, and the…

With the scars of the Second World War still visible across Great Britain, in 1948 the eyes of the world turned to the country who were set to host the fourteenth Olympiad. Would Britain be able to manage, just three years after the end of the crippling conflict that still saw rationing in place, and bomb sites across its towns and cities?The 14th Olympiad opens at London | Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News | 11 August 1948In this special blog, using our newspapers,…

The first Paralympics took place in Rome in 1960. But this was not the beginning of competitive sport for people with disabilities; indeed, the origins of the Paralympics can partly be traced to the aftermath of the Second World War and the work undertaken at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.Archers at Stoke Mandeville Hospital | The Sphere | 21 August 1948And nor was it the culmination of such work; the Paralympics in Rome were only open to those with mobility or physical disabilities, who made…

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…

This week the presses continue to whir, and we have added 129,872 brand new pages to our collection. Our additions this week are to Britain’s longest-running tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror, to which we have added over 100,000 colour pages spanning the years 1923 through to 1986, and to the Glamorgan Gazette, which covers the central Glamorgan area. Founded in 1894, it continues to be published to this day.Register now and explore the ArchiveFor anyone with an interest in crime history, the British…