Page from 1904 Pathé catalogue with Garden as Mélisande (BL collections) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Soprano Mary Garden was born in Aberdeen in 1874. Her mother was only fourteen years of age when Mary, one of four daughters, was born. The family went to America when Mary…

Sue Bishop summarises the 2018 OHS/OHNI Dangerous Oral Histories conference.

This week’s selection comes from Stephen Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary & Creative Recordings. This week we feature a complete studio recording of the Indian poet Saqi Farooqi reading his work. The reading was made at the British Library almost exactly 10 years ago today. The poet reads in Urdu…

Have you ever noticed how some animals are named after people? Hume’s Partridge. Lady Amherst’s Pheasant. Waller’s Starling. I come across this quite a lot when cataloguing new collections and have often wondered who these people were. You’d be forgiven for thinking that these species were named after the naturalists…

Bronislaw Huberman (courtesy of Biddulph Records) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Welcome to another in the occasional series of podcasts showcasing treasures from the classical collection of the British Library Sound Archive. A veteran broadcaster, Rob Cowan currently presents Cowan’s Classics on Classic FM. From an early age…