Earlier this year, the Library was delighted to host a series of recording sessions with the four co-editors of Clod Magazine. For those of you who don’t already know, Clod is an independent magazine, founded in Luton in 1987, and now approaching its 40th issue. It appears irregularly, with publication…

Following the integration of the Key Stage Two (KS2; ages 7 – 11) Windrush Voices workshop into the British Library’s core schools programme, members of the Learning Team have been developing a workshop for Key Stage 3 (KS3; ages 11 – 14) learners. This uses a similar framework to the…

Today, 7th March, would mark the 71st birthday of Rory Young: sculptor, stone carver, letterer, and building conservator, who sadly died in 2023. In the autumn of 2022, I had the opportunity to interview Rory for the National Life Stories collection Artists’ Lives. We arranged this interview following Rory’s terminal…

Blog by Rosa Kurowska Kyffin, interviewer for National Life Stories. Today, 7th March, would mark the 71st birthday of Rory Young: sculptor, stone carver, letterer, and building conservator, who sadly died in 2023. In the autumn of 2022, I had the opportunity to interview Rory for the National Life Stories…

On Christmas Eve 1818, Austrian priest Josef Mohr asked his church organist Franz Gruber to set a poem he had written to music. That evening during the Christmas Eve service ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’ had it’s first ever performance. The first English translation of the song, ‘Stilly Night, Holy Night’…