Recording of the week: A personal jazz mystery solved

This week’s selection comes from Jim Hickson, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. I’m a jazz nut. My mental soundtrack is often filled with anonymous changes and walking bass solos. But there is one particular song that has been buzzing around my head for years and years –…

Recording of the week: Dialect in children’s play

This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. One of the fascinating aspects of children’s imaginative play, as celebrated on the Library’s Playtimes website, is how games and rhymes evolve and adapt to reflect time and place. Two British Library recordings of thumb war, for instance,…

Public libraries in the words of people who use, work in and run them

Dr Sarah Pyke reflects on Living Libraries, an oral history project that collected interviews on the institution of the public library in the UK.

Recording of the week: Neville Chamberlain and King George VI’s broadcasts regarding Britain declaring war on Germany in 1939

This week’s selection comes from Joseph McGeady, Learning Team Apprentice. The British Library has recently launched its Speaking Out website, an online resource exploring the importance of public speaking and debating through a collection of sound recordings from the Library’s sound archive. Included in the Speaking Out collection are excerpts…

Recording of the week: When in the trees the rooks build high

This week’s selection comes from Cheryl Tipp, Wildlife & Environmental Sounds Curator. Birds have long been viewed as predictors of weather. Their voices, flight patterns and nest building activities have been closely observed by countless generations, keen on knowing what conditions to expect for the coming year. One such bird…