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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 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…

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…

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…

In the decade after the Second World War had come to an end, and indeed beyond, many communities across the United Kingdom were faced with very vivid reminders of the conflict: bomb sites, the country’s ‘war scars.’In this blog, we will examine how people in Britain lived alongside bomb sits in the 1950s, using newspapers taken from The Archive. We will explore how communities adapted to live beside bomb sites, and how they transformed them into gardens and playgrounds.…

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…

When the Blitz began on 7 September 1940, ‘It was the people of London who took command…Men, women, and children went straight to the safest place they could think of – the Underground stations.’In this special blog, over 80 years after the beginning of the Blitz, we take a look at how London’s main transport system – the Underground –  became a popular place of shelter for those seeking protection from the German bombing campaign, using an assortment of articles and photographs all to be…