Search the blog

We’re delighted this week to bring you an astonishing amount of new pages, over half a million in all, as we trace everything from music history through the pages of Sound Wave to workers’ history through Common Good. Here are the figures for you: we’ve added 526,032 brand new pages in all, alongside seven brand new titles, and we’ve updated 28 of our existing titles.From Fife to Folkestone, from Llangollen to Liverpool, from Roscommon to Ripley, through our new pages this…

This week at The Archive, we have added another 190,692 new pages to our total count. We welcome three new titles that take us both underground into the mining industry, and across the water to 19th century Antigua. Additionally, we have updated nineteen of our pre-existing titles, including one final year to complete the 1956-1985 run of our 100 millionth title, Dundee Courier, as well as more to special interest title, Bicycling News.So continue reading to find out more about our fascinating…

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…

This week at The Archive we have reached a landmark 78 million pages, as we explore 1995‘s Battle of Britpop, played out between bands Blur and Oasis. We’ve added one brand new title this week, Scottish newspaper the Ellon Times & East Gordon Advertiser, with 441,915 pages added in all over the last seven days. Meanwhile, we’ve updated 26 of our existing titles, from across England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.Before we move on to take a look at the Battle of Britpop, a…

From the 1950s onwards the United Kingdom has produced many extraordinary music icons in the arenas of pop, rock and more. The rise of these British music icons, both bands and solo artists, is chronicled throughout our newspaper Archive.And so, in this special blog, we’ve delved into our Archive to bring you early reviews of Britain’s biggest bestselling music artists. From Shirley Bassey to Duran Duran, from Kate Bush to the Rolling Stones, we’ve picked 42 music icons to highlight,…

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…

As Christmas is once more upon us, and the world slowly starts to go back to normal after several years of lockdowns, Christmas parties are again back in vogue. It got us wondering here at The Archive how the Christmas party has changed and developed over time. Naturally, we turned to our newspapers to discover more, learning how the key components of food, drink and music have always been part of historic Christmas celebrations.So in this special blog, we…

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.…

This week you might just be able to witness steam coming off our presses, as we have added an impressive 343,381 brand new pages to The Archive, with 22 brand new titles joining us this week alone. Comprising of special interest titles devoted to music and the cinema, as well as to different spheres of employment, from postal work to pawnbroking, our new titles this week are an eclectic mix, comprising also the regional and the international, covering the latest from both…