First Consul Bonaparte by Antoine-Jean Gros c. 1802 By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music In May of this year I wrote a blog on the 250th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Wellesley, Field Marshall His Grace the Duke of Wellington. His enemy at the Battle of Waterloo in…

This week’s selection comes from Vikki Greenwood, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. C880 is a fabulously intriguing collection of interviews, conducted by Rena Feld, of twenty-nine women who either were or are conscientious objectors. Their reasons varied – religious, moral, political – but they held firm in…

Beatrice Harrison with cello (BL Collections) Guest blog by Edison Fellow Chas Helge who is currently writing his dissertation on Beatrice Harrison Suddenly, the door opened and the King came in. He was quite alone. He came up to me… saying, ‘Nightingale, nightingale,’ he said, ‘you have done what I…

Two years into an ambitious, nationwide project, the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage team recently celebrated reaching the milestone of 100,000 digitised sound recordings. Supported by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Unlocking Our Sound Heritage is a major British Library project focused on identifying, cataloguing and digitally preserving half…

This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. Watching a child acquire its first language is a fascinating process. At a certain age, children naturally apply rules drawn from their exposure to their mother tongue to create forms which ‘seem’ right. The most obvious example is…