Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s (Unknown photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago this month. During the second half of the twentieth century he was the one figure that brought classical music to the general public in…

This week’s collection comes from Jowan Collier, Acquisitions Support Officer. To me, sea shanty singing is as nostalgic and drippingly lovely as a freshly pulled pint of real ale. As a teenager, I used to huddle into the back room of the Jacob’s Ladder Inn in Falmouth with a few…

Anwar Brett (1966-2013) was a freelance film critic and the author of the book Dorset in Film (Dorset Books, 2011). For around 25 years, from his early 20s onward, he wrote for a broad range of different national and regional newspapers and magazines. He also contributed to The International Directory…

This week’s selection comes from Rowan Campbell, former PhD placement student who worked on the VoiceBank collection. Cataloguers shouldn’t have favourites… but it’s hard when one person sums up so beautifully what a collection is about! That’s how I feel about this woman from Oldham, who contributed the following words…

This week’s selection comes from Holly Gilbert, Cataloguer of Digital Multimedia Collections. Husband and wife, Kārlis and Shirley, talk about the magical experience of being part of photographer Spencer Tunick’s ‘Sea of Hull’ installation in which 3,200 people volunteered to take off their clothes, paint themselves blue and stand in…