After more than a decade on our current blogging platform, we’re moving British Library blogs to bl.uk/blogs from 30 September 2025. Join us to get the latest stories and updates from our curators, cataloguers, reference staff and guest contributors. Find out more about amazing items in our collection, recent acquisitions,…

Mary Stewart, Lead Curator of Oral History and Director of National Life Stories, writes: We are delighted today, 20 August 2025, to wish Professor Paul Thompson an extremely happy 90th birthday. Not only was Paul one of the founding lights of the oral history movement in the UK in the…

Guest blog by Megan Thomas (ESRC CASE PhD student and Graduate Impact Assistant) and Dr Jonathan Hogg (Co-I on ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’), University of Liverpool. The launch of ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’ on the 12th of September at The British Library…

Guest blog post by Dr Anna Cole, Heritage Lead, Rape Crisis England and Wales with input from Dr Ellie Whittingdale, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University. The Rape Crisis movement emerged in the UK just over 50 years ago, in the early 1970s. It can be contextualised within…

In July – in a first for the British Library Oral History team – we held a reflective listening session at a major UK agricultural event: Groundswell. Now in its ninth year, Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival takes place each summer at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire, providing a forum for anyone…