By Steve Cleary, Lead Curator, Literary and Creative Recordings. In October this year many of us at the British Library were distressed to hear of the death of Ian Rawes. Best known to the wider world for his field recording project London Sound Survey, Ian once worked at the Library….

Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English, writes: It’s perhaps not surprising that vax and its more conventional older sibling, vaccine, were designated 2021 Word Of The Year by dictionaries in the UK and USA respectively. This weekend also sees the annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) awards…

Mengelberg in 1919 by Jacob Merkelbach By Jonathan Summers Curator, Classical Music Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951) was one of the greatest conductors of the first half of the twentieth century. A friend of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, Mengelberg championed their works with his expertly disciplined orchestra, the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam….

This week’s selection comes from Georgia Dack, Web Content Developer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. The British Library recently launched its new website Speaking Out, an online learning resource exploring the power of public speaking, protest and debate through its sound archive. Featured in Speaking Out, is an interview with…

Clifford Curzon (photo © Fritz Curzon. Used with permission) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music One of the great British pianists of the twentieth century, Clifford Curzon is remembered in this podcast by Callum Ross. We trace his life and career from his early days at the Royal Academy…