MARCH 3, 2022 The BBC: A People’s History by the Connected Histories of the BBC project’s founding director David Hendy was published on 27 January 2022 by Profile Books Ltd. Based on many of the unique oral histories that the CH-BBC project is…
Blog Archives
Entertaining the UK
Eighty-five years after the BBC broadcast its first-ever variety programme for television during the 1936 RadiOlympia exhibition, the latest edition of ‘Voices of the BBC‘ – Entertaining the UK – draws on a range of interviews from the BBC Oral…
Posted in 100 Voices
A teacher responds to the archive materials
NOVEMBER 16, 2020 I wear many hats, and aside from working on the Connected Histories of the BBC project (CHBBC), I am an English teacher. As the project develops, and new archive materials are released, I’m fascinated by the wealth…
Posted in Blogs
The challenge of inheritance
JUNE 5, 2020 We’re delighted to announce that Professor Margaretta Jolly, a co-investigator in the Connected Histories of the BBC project, has just been awarded the 2019 Hogan Prize. The prize is given to an ‘outstanding essay’ submitted to a…
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To Be Continued
APRIL 9, 2020 Former BBC Monitoring Service employee’s journals found and adapted into a new web series. “I don’t know what the future may bring, but I think there are fairly good prospects in the BBC. After two years there,…
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War from the inside: Oral histories from the BBC
FEBRUARY 12, 2020 What was it like to work for the BBC during the Second World War and did it play a special role in shaping the public’s experience of war? These are two of the issues addressed during our…
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The BBC and the Cold War
‘The BBC and the Cold War’ marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9th November 1989. In both its domestic programmes and those broadcast overseas by its World Service, the BBC mapped the course of the…
Posted in 100 Voices
Opening up the oral history of the BBC during World War Two
OCTOBER 31, 2019 We’ve recently launched the sixth of our Voices of the BBC websites, featuring some enticing highlights from the Corporation’s oral history archives. It’s all about The BBC and World War Two and it went live on 3 September 2019,…
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The BBC and World War Two
On 3 September 1939 Britain went to war with Hitler’s Germany. In the fight against fascism, broadcasting played a starring role: as public informant, morale-booster, and propaganda weapon. ‘The BBC and World War Two’ draws on the Oral History Collection…
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Project Management Systems: Our project Journey
AUGUST 20, 2019 One of my first tasks as project administrator was to identify a Project Management System for the Connected Histories team to use. As an information professional, with a background in libraries management, and a techie at heart,…
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The BBC oral history collection as sound and data
JULY 26, 2019 Most historians work in text – we imagine ourselves surrounded by books and filing cabinets full of archival scribblings. But increasingly, we also work with other kinds of data. For myself, the BBC Connected Histories project has challenged me…
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What’s in an (oral history) archive?
MAY 23, 2019 Anna-Maria Sichani When I initially started working for ‘Connected Histories of the BBC’ as a PostDoc Research Fellow, almost a year ago, I naively felt rather confident about my knowledge of what an archive might contain. I…
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Project Update
MARCH 15, 2019 We’re entering a particularly busy time in the life of the Connected Histories of the BBC project. This month’s blog focuses on some of our upcoming events.
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Why oral history? The BBC and the challenge of memory
JANUARY 10, 2019 Introspective, sometimes confessional, the 650+ filmed interviews with former staff in an ongoing oral history of the BBC contrast dramatically with the broadcaster’s lustrous front face. But for anyone wanting to understand the policies, people, direction and…
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Voices of the BBC: Pioneering Women
DECEMBER 13, 2018 As part of the AHRC-Connected Histories of the BBC, Saturday1st December 2018 saw the launch of the fifth in the series of BBC websites, Voices of the BBC. Pioneering Women is published to coincide with the centenary of women’s…
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Pioneering Women
This edition of ‘Voices of the BBC‘ was prompted by the 2018 centenary of partial women’s suffrage. It draws on the BBC Oral History collection to explore the working lives of women at the BBC, both on air and behind-the-scenes,…
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Website Launched – Voices of the BBC: People, Nation, Empire
JULY 18, 2018 The BBC has opened up its archives for exploration of how TV and radio have understood and covered race, immigration, British identity, and nation across the twentieth century. As part of the AHRC-Connected Histories of the BBC,…
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People, Nation, Empire
To mark seventy years from June 1948, when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury and King George formally ceased being Emperor of India, ‘People, Nation, Empire’ dipped into the archives to explore how the BBC has responded to a multi-cultural,…
Posted in 100 Voices
Radio Reinvented
To mark fifty years since the launch of Radio 1, ‘Radio Reinvented’ offered a selection of clips from the BBC Oral History Collection that tells the behind-the-scenes story of the suppression of pirate radio and the BBC’s first pop-music station.…
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The Birth of TV
The BBC launched the world’s first regular ‘high-definition’ television service in 1936. This edition of Voices of the BBC explores the story of the BBC’s involvement in early television, from John Logie Baird’s mechanical experiments in the 1920s through to 1953, when…
Posted in 100 Voices
This collage contains a selection of interviewees from the Connected Histories of the BBC catalogue. Top row from left to right: Joan Bakewell, Asa Briggs, Deborah George, John Tusa, Mamta Gupta, and Olive Bottle. Bottom row from left to right: Julia Zapata, Esther Rantzen, Venera Koichieva, Suluma Kassim, John Birt, Olive Shapley, and Mike Phillips.