Today, 7th March, would mark the 71st birthday of Rory Young: sculptor, stone carver, letterer, and building conservator, who sadly died in 2023. In the autumn of 2022, I had the opportunity to interview Rory for the National Life Stories collection Artists’ Lives. We arranged this interview following Rory’s terminal…

Blog by Rosa Kurowska Kyffin, interviewer for National Life Stories. Today, 7th March, would mark the 71st birthday of Rory Young: sculptor, stone carver, letterer, and building conservator, who sadly died in 2023. In the autumn of 2022, I had the opportunity to interview Rory for the National Life Stories…

On Christmas Eve 1818, Austrian priest Josef Mohr asked his church organist Franz Gruber to set a poem he had written to music. That evening during the Christmas Eve service ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’ had it’s first ever performance. The first English translation of the song, ‘Stilly Night, Holy Night’…

Portrait of W. J. Holloway, taken in 1893. Copyright National Portrait Gallery. It is not often that you can hear the voice of someone born more than 180 years ago. Actor W. J. (William James) Holloway was born in Westminster in 1843 but at the age of thirteen his family…

We are deeply saddened to report the passing of Patrick Sellar who died in November at the age of 95. Patrick Sellar co-founded the wildlife section in 1969 along with BBC natural history broadcaster Jeffery Boswall. Though Patrick never worked for the sound archive in an official capacity, he was…