Blog Archives

‘How Sussex Supported the Miners’

Audience watching the Miners Strike event

Earlier this week on the 18th June 2024, the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) delivered a new report to the Home Office and every major party on the events of what has been dubbed the ‘Battle of Orgeave’. Earlier this year Matt Foot, from OTJC, joined the Library, UCU and Unite the Union at an event that marked the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike, to talk about the campaigns fight for an independent enquiry. Elsa van Helfteren has put together a blog post of the highlights from the evening looking at Sussex’s involvement in the strike.

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Posted in Collections

“I am not Interested in the Coronation”: Similarities and Dissimilarities in Mass Observation’s 12th May Diaries from 1937 and 2023.

A scan of a colour photograph of a long picnic table. It is covered in a white table cloth and red, white and blue decorations. It is covered in food, forming part of a street party.

Reposted from the Mass Observation website By Emily Calcraft Introduction On 12th May 1937 a Day Survey Respondent from Oldham stated: ‘I am not interested in the Coronation and regard all the fuss as artificial and irrational’. In May 2023,

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Posted in Collections, MO (Mass Observation), The Keep

Speed Conservation

A closed book resting on it's side. The cover is brown leather and the title 'The life of Olaudah Equiano' is visible. The book is damaged.

Rosey Pool and the case of the damaged Equiano; or a book made safe and a treasure revealed.

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Posted in Collections

Rosey Pool (1905-71) exhibition

Black and white still of Rosey Pool (1905-71) sat at a table with a copy of her book and a drink.

Our exhibition of Rosey Pool’s personal book collection is now open on the ground floor of the library (at the bottom of the main staircase), created by Assistant Library Officer, Elsa van Helfteren.

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Posted in Collections

Weetabix Trifle and beyond…

Back issues of Woman's Own magazine

By Rose Lock  Women’s magazines. Trivial, eh? Just a collection of inconsequential articles on how to keep your man happy, patterns for knitted shorts, vile make-do-type recipes, and adverts for lipsticks and washing powder.  Well, yes, all of these things

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Posted in Special Collections, The Keep, The Library, Uncategorised

The Papers of St John and Mary Hutchinson from The Jeremy Hutchinson QC Archive

Two books in a box surrounded by tissue paper. One is labeled 'SxMs207/1/1/2/2 St John Hutchinson 1917-1923 Diary'

My name is Alexander Taylor, and I am the Project Archivist working on cataloguing, preserving, and making available the Jeremy Hutchinson QC archive. The collection comprises records from Jeremy and his family’s personal and professional lives. This article will comprise the first in a series of 3 blog posts examining the collection in its entirety, with the first focusing on the uncatalogued personal papers of Jeremy’s parents, St John Hutchinson, a prominent defence barrister, and Mary Hutchinson (née Barnes), a short-story writer and model.

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Posted in Special Collections

Re-opening the Call for Mass Observers; motivations of a volunteer

by Kirsty Pattrick – Mass Observation Projects Officer “Writing a Mass Observation directive is like taking a thought for a walk” F5186 I was drawn to this lovely quote from one of our Observers. It makes me think of the

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Posted in MO (Mass Observation), The Keep

Freedom Day – new perspectives on apartheid from the BLDS Legacy Collection

Today marks the 28th anniversary of South Africa’s first post-apartheid elections, now commemorated as Freedom Day. Previously, under the apartheid regime, non-whites in general had only limited voting rights, while black South Africans were unable to vote at all. The

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Posted in BLDS (British Library for Development Studies)

Everyday kindness

By Suzanne Rose – Mass Observation Education and outreach officer Richard Ratcliffe, currently on day 17 of a hunger strike as part of his campaign to free his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe writes in The Guardian on 10th November 2021, “Amid

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Posted in MO (Mass Observation), The Keep

Welcome to Legacy…

The University of Sussex Library Legacy collection A diverse collection of over 20,000 documents, pamphlets, books and reports which have been collected by the Library since it opened in 1964 From local to national, the well known to little known

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Posted in Legacy collection, The Library