This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. Capturing authentic dialect and slang presents a considerable challenge, but documenting nonce-words is almost impossible. We have all probably coined a nonce-word on the spur of the moment – either intentionally or accidentally – to describe an action,… read more
This week’s selection comes from Dr Cai Parry-Jones, Curator of Oral History. In this extract, Holocaust survivor, Judith Steinberg, talks about her husband who arrived in Britain in 1939 on the Kindertransport from Germany. Steinberg’s husband was one of 200 Jewish refugee children who spent their early war years living… read more
This week’s selection comes from Kevin Lemonnier, Preservation Audio Engineer. This is the only known recording in existence of Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro Op. 47. The performance took place during the 1937 London Music Festival and was privately recorded off broadcast,… read more
This week’s selection comes from Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds. Sparkie Williams was a prize-winning talking budgerigar, renowned for his impressive vocabulary of over 500 words, sayings and rhymes. In 1958 he was crowned top bird in the BBC’s International Cage Word Contest which turned him into… read more
This week’s selection comes from Dr Eva del Rey, Curator of Drama and Literature Recordings and Digital Performance. In this recording, made in 1991 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, British literary theorist Terry Eagleton discusses the intricacies of the concept of ideology with French sociologist, anthropologist and… read more