Episodes
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Episode 6 of National Life Stories podcast features Paul Merchant talking to Charlie Morgan about his work on the project Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum. The oral histories conducted by Paul were part of a much larger project run out of Newman University, York University and the University of Kent and led by Dr Fern Elsdon Baker and Professor Bernard Lightman. You find out more information on their website: http://sciencereligionspectrum.org/about-2/
All the interviews conducted by Paul are available on British Library Sounds. Clips in the episode are taken from the following interviews:
John Hedley Brooke, C1672/08: https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Science/021M-C1672X0008XX-0001V0 Mary Midgley, C1672/05: https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Science/021M-C1672X0005XX-0001V0 Simon Conway Morris, C1672/14: https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Science/021M-C1672X0014XX-0001V0If you’d like to learn more check out our collection guide on Oral histories of religion and belief: https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/oral-histories-of-religion-and-belief
National Life Stories: www.bl.uk/projects/national-life-stories
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Dr Liz Wright talks about a new collection of theatre design interviews available on British Library Sounds.
This month National Life Stories publishes a new collection of theatre oral histories at British Library Sounds. The interviews that make up the collection capture life behind the scenes in British theatre - through the life stories of its designers and directors. What do the the recordings tell us about the theatre design profession, and about what was it like to make them?
Track list:
Billy Meall – accent from C1173/05.
Lis Evans – ideas from C1173/15.
Pamela Howard – colours from C1173/07.
Alison Chitty – roses from C1173/19.
Richard Hudson – Pelham puppets from C1173/17.
Alison Chitty – on design from C1173/19.
Alison Chitty – collaborators from C1173/19.
Alison Chitty – economy from C1173/19.
Bernard Cribbins – ghost from C1173/14.
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Missing episodes?
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Cathy Courtney, Project Director on the National Life Stories oral history projects Artists’ Lives and Architects’ Lives, chatted to David Govier for our fourth National Life Stories podcast. The conversation starts with why Cathy got into oral history, and moves on to discuss why oral historians ask about Christmas.
Along the way you will hear extracts from the following interviews:
Neil Hufton interviewed by Cos Michael, Food: From Source to Salespoint, 2006 (C821/195)
George Messenger interviewed by George Ewart Evans, 1956 (T1419W)
Bill Adcocks interviewed by Rachel Cutler, An Oral History of British Athletics, 2010 (C790/48)
Christopher Butler interviewed by Andrea Hertz, History of Parliament Oral History Project, 2016 (C1503/142)Michael Rothenstein interviewed by Mel Gooding, Artists’ Lives, 1990 (C466/02)
John Watts interviewed by Cos Michael, Food: From Source to Salespoint, 2006 (C821/190)
Nigel Bell interviewed by Paul Merchant, An Oral History of British Science (C1379/91)
Eric Ash interviewed by Tom Lean, An Oral History of British Science (C1379/92)Cedric Battye interviewed by Jan Sanderson, Unheard Voices: Interviews with Deafened People, 2008 (C1345/12)
Eva Jiricna interviewed by Niamh Dillon, Architects’ Lives, 2015 (C467/127)You can find out more about National Life Stories at our website. Search for 'Christmas' at British Library Sounds to find over 1,350 Christmas memories, songs and broadcasts!
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For our third National Life Stories podcast Charlie Morgan spoke to Steven Dryden, Broadcast Recordings Curator at the British Library and co-curator of the exhibition Gay UK: Love Law and Liberty. Gay UK ran from June-September 2017 and marked 50 years since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and 60 years since the Wolfenden Report. The exhibition was extremely popular and it just so happened that it contained a lot of oral histories!
In podcast you'll from interviews which discuss organizations like the Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Gay Liberation Front, as well experiences ranging from World War 2 to 1970s nightclubs. You'll also hear Steven's views on how he chose clips for the exhibition and how it felt to edit, or “hack to pieces", those same clips.
Clips in the episode are taken from the following interviews:
John Alcock, C456/003 Hall-Carpenter Oral History Project: cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/…hdata1=CKEY4014153 Tony Dyson, C456/074 Hall-Carpenter Oral History Project: cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/…hdata1=CKEY4014176 Maureen Duffy, C1276/03 Authors’ Lives: cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/…hdata1=CKEY7097153 Mary McIntosh, C1420/11 Sisterhood & After: The Women’s Liberation Oral History Project: cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/…hdata1=CKEY7563647 Jonathan Blake, C456/104 Hall-Carpenter Oral History Project: sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Obser…0456X0104XX-0001V0If you’d like to learn more check out our collection guide on Oral histories of sexuality, reproductive health and prostitution: www.bl.uk/collection-guides/or…lth-and-prostitution
National Life Stories: www.bl.uk/projects/national-life-stories
Gay UK: www.bl.uk/press-releases/2017/…-the-british-library -
Dr Tom Lean, Project Interviewer on An Oral History of the Electricity Supply Industry, chatted to David Govier for our second National Life Stories podcast. Tom takes us back to 1950s Lancashire when Granville Camsey (born 1936, shelfmark C1495/09) was about to become a power station apprentice.
Granville eventually became a senior manager at the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in the 1980s and a Director of National Power in the 1990s, but in 1952 he was a craft apprentice from a working class family:
“I was introduced to the power station because my mother had a weaving friend in the mill, Mrs Ashworth, and her son had got a student apprenticeship at the power station and she said: ‘You'll never believe it May, they gave him two pairs of overalls.’ And I can remember my mother saying ‘you should go to the power station, they give you overalls...’”
Listen to the podcast to find out how Granville's career (and fashion sense) developed from his early years in overalls to managing power stations in the age of privatisation.
Along the way, Tom explains what the oral history project set out to do, how he recruited his interviewees (by rolling eighty-year-olds down a mountain, seeing as you wondered), and what happens when the interviews are finished (he puts them next to the magna carta, apparently).
National Life Stories: www.bl.uk/projects/national-life-stories
An Oral History of the Electricity Supply Industry: www.bl.uk/projects/national-li…y-industry-in-the-uk
Granville Camsey's full oral history interview: sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Indus…1495X0009XX-0001V0 -
1987 seems like a long time ago. Margaret Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in government, Everton topped the first division of the football league and Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ became the first UK Number 1 available on CD format. In that year Paul Thompson and Asa Briggs launched the National Life Stories Collection.
From its modest beginnings, National Life Stories has grown significantly and helped to create one of the largest oral history collections in the world – the British Library holds some 70,000 recordings of which nearly 3,000 are long, in-depth biographical interviews created by National Life Stories.
This year we celebrated our 30th birthday by highlighting in our annual review interviews from each of our main fieldwork projects, introduced by someone connected to that project. We’re also using these articles as a jumping-off point for the newest National Life Stories venture - our podcast.
Each pod will bring you a conversation between your hosts Charlie Morgan or David Govier and someone else associated with National Life Stories – from interviewers, to curators, to listening service staff, to technical staff who digitize and care for the analogue recordings. We’ll be using our new medium to surface great interview extracts and try to get to the bottom of what we think is special about the life story approach to oral history.
Our first episode takes us back to 1988 when National Life Stories was only a year old. Piper Alpha was an oil rig in the North Sea, north east of Aberdeen. It suffered a huge explosion on the 6th of July 1988 killing 167 people. National Life Stories worked with the University of Aberdeen on the oral history project Lives in the Oil Industry to document the oil industry.
In the course of the project we interviewed survivors of the Piper Alpha disaster and other people who were affected by it. Mary Stewart, Oral History Curator, chatted to Dave about the project.
National Life Stories: www.bl.uk/projects/national-life-stories
Lives in the Oil Industry catalogue: bit.do/livesinoil
