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This week we have added an icon of British teenage life to our Archive, DC Thomson’s best-selling teen magazine, none other than Jackie. A weekly magazine for girls, Jackie was a cultural phenomenon.We’ve published every single edition of Jackie here at The Archive, running from 1964 through to 1993. That means we’ve added 51,474 pages of purely Jackie this week, a lively and bright smorgasbord of everything that appealed to a young teenage girl in the latter half of the twentieth century.…

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…

We’re starting this week off with a bang as we have added 218,828 brand new pages to The Archive, as we investigate the 1964 ‘Battle of Pier Gap,’ in which mods and rockers clashed in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. Meanwhile, we’ve added one brand new title to The Archive, the East Essex Advertiser and Clacton News, as well as making extensive updates to our existing titles from across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.From Croydon to Clacton, from South Bank to South Devon, read…

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.…

The popularity of walking or ‘hiking,’ as it is termed, is amazingly on the increase. ‘Sabbath day journeys’ are undertaken by the youth of both sexes, armed with knapsacks. Starting from Waterloo to the Surrey hills and commons, where they walk, either in clubs or in private companies, or alone, all day, to return by train at night.So relates The Sphere in the September of 1930 in an article entitled ‘Knapsackery on the Surrey Hills.’ Regarded as the ‘Phenomenon of…

‘…coloured velvet collars and cuffs, trousers that were so tight they couldn’t sit down in them, belts on the back of their jackets, long narrow ties like bootlaces,’  this is of course the style of the Teddy Boys, the British youth subculture which defined the 1950s, as described in the Londonderry Sentinel.The Sphere | 22 September 1956The Teddy Boys, embracing the Edwardian style of decades before, were a threat to the status quo in a way that Britain had never quite…

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…

In honour of Remembrance Day, during the month of November, The British Newspaper Archive will be focusing our attention on military in the newspapers.  Coming up this month we will feature blogs about our special military titles, researching military history, women and war, and wartime rationing and fashion, as well as a guest blog about a remarkable Great War discovery from The Archive.  To begin our military month, we are delving into the newspaper headlines through the years for the…

Space RaceThe Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States experienced a significant ratcheting up at the end of the 1950s with the Sputnik Crisis, which saw the successful launching and orbit of the satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957. This development was a key factor in the creation of NASA the following year by the United States as well as the investment of federal funds into national security and research and development.An important milestone…