This week’s selection comes from Camille Johnston, Oral History Assistant Archivist. Three men dusting books, one bent over © New York Public Library Archives, The New York Public Library John Milne, born in 1929 in Aberdeen, worked for Bisset’s Bookshop in the 1950s. In his life story recording he reflected…

This week’s selection comes from Steve Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary and Creative Recordings. Richard Attenborough at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Photo by gdcgraphics at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gdcgraphics/ CC BY 2.0 In a previous blog post I introduced the Anwar Brett collection. This comprises interviews and press conferences featuring film…

This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. In this audio clip, Iona McDonald describes a familiar experience – failure to understand someone from a different part of the country or English-speaking world. Extremely broad dialect speakers can occasionally seem unintelligible, even to speakers of closely…

This week’s selection comes from Andrew Ormsby, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. Caitlín Maude was an Irish poet, playwright, actress and traditional singer from Rosmuc, Connemara, in the west of Ireland. Her version of the traditional Irish song ‘Liam O Raghallaigh’ was recorded by Peter Kennedy in…

This week’s selection comes from Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Recordings. German born British musician Geroge Henschel was born in 1850 and became a close friend of Brahms whom he met in 1874 when the composer was 41 years of age. A multi-talented musician, Henschel was a baritone, pianist…