Search the blog

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…

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…

In the late 1930s a newcomer made her way onto British cinema screens: Princess Kouka. From Sudan, Princess Kouka, born Tahia Ibrahim Belal, had been spotted by film producer Walter Futter, who was determined for her to appear in his next film.Using newspapers from the time, we uncover the legacy of this largely forgotten film star, who travelled to Britain and impressed audiences across the country.‘A Notable Newcomer’On 18 December 1936 London’s Daily News reported on the impending arrival…

American-born jazz age superstar Adelaide Hall (1901-1993) was a Black music legend, who from 1938 onwards made Britain her home. She went on to have a long and successful career in the UK.In this very special blog, as part of Black History Month on The Archive, we will celebrate this jazz age queen who came to Britain and entertained thousands of people via her stage and radio performances, using newspapers taken from our Archive.A Star Is BornTo go back…

Born in 1909 in Chicago, ‘dancing anthropologist’ Katherine Dunham was known as the ‘matriarch and queen mother of Black dance.’ Her father was a descendant of enslaved West Africans and Madagascans, whilst her mother hailed from Canada.A multitalented artist, academic and activist, for many years Katherine Dunham ran the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supporting African-American dance troupe in the mid-twentieth century. It was during this time that Dunham toured the United Kingdom, and in this special blog, we…

At the British Newspaper Archive we are always delighted to hear how The Archive has been used to inform a range of different research interests. In this very special guest blog, Sidonia Serafini of Georgia College & State University and Barbara McCaskill of the University of Georgia take a look at the work of the Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Birmingham’s first Black minister, as reported in the British press, through the newspapers to be found in our collection.In March 1883, Reverend…

This March at The Archive we are celebrating inspiring women from history, who broke boundaries across different fields, whether they be medical, sporting, political and much more besides. We will be highlighting those inspiring women who broke the mould, and we will be showcasing the achievements of some lesser known women along the way, who deserve recognition for their trailblazing lives and careers.And in this special blog, we will be looking at ten inspiring women from history who you…

In the aftermath of the First World War, severe competition for jobs, especially in the ports of the United Kingdom, became widespread. Alongside this competition, a new awareness of Britain’s Black and minority ethnic population arose, fuelling the perception that such so-called ‘foreigners’ were stealing the scarcely available jobs.This toxic atmosphere would ultimately lead to the race riots of 1919, which began in January and lasted until August of that year. Violence broke out in cities across the United Kingdom,…

This week the presses have gone into overdrive to bring you half a million brand new newspaper pages, or 505,430 brand new pages to be exact. We’ve added ten brand new newspapers from across the world, from Guyana and Antigua, as we continue to tell the often confronting story of the British Empire. Meanwhile, we’ve also added new newspapers from England and from Wales, whilst we’ve made updates to a staggering 75 of our existing titles.So read on to discover more…

As part of Black History Month this October, we have taken a look at the extraordinary life of Learie Constantine (1901-1971), a cricketer from Trinidad who would go on to become the United Kingdom’s first ever Black peer.The first player to take a Test match wicket for the West Indies, and described as one of the best all-round cricketers the world has ever seen, Learie Constantine’s career extended beyond sport, as he fought tirelessly against racial discrimination, as he became…