By Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife & Environmental Sounds. The natural world is one of the cornerstone themes of British folkloric tradition. From familiar animals to mysterious creatures, our local tales and superstitions are full of references to nature. For centuries birds, and especially their voices, have been a particularly…

(1LP0242247 BL collections) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Michel Legrand, who died a few weeks ago, was a prolific composer for the screen. He won Academy Awards for Summer of ’42 and music for Barbra Streisand’s Yentl and penned the great hit Windmills of your mind for the…

This week’s selection comes from Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds. Life in a rock pool is not for the faint-hearted. These miniature ecosystems, found in the intertidal zone, have evolved to endure extreme condition fluctuations caused by the daily movements of the tide. From full submersion to…

Albert Coates circa 1920 (Bain News Service, publisher [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) 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. David Patmore, a retired lecturer from the University of…

This week’s selection comes from Andrea Zarza Canova, Curator of World and Traditional Music. Natural history broadcaster and author Dennis Furnell first travelled to Sierra Leone in January 1991 to record wildlife sounds for his radio programme Country Scene, broadcast on BBC Bedfordshire. As an active environmentalist involved with charities…