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How to search for historic events in the newspapers

Britain’s favourite horticultural happening is right around the corner once again. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show begins on 23 May and will be held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, for the 105th time. To celebrate, we’re showing you exactly how to go about unearthing newspaper stories on the Flower Show, and other long-running events, using our ever-growing Archive.

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Searching for an event in the Archive is much like searching for a person’s name, a place, or a particular object.

How to search

    1. Start by going to the search page and typing in the event that you want to find newspaper coverage on. In this example, we’re using the Chelsea Flower Show.

Search Tip: Use quote marks around names and phrases to make sure the search engine looks for the words together.

2. Press the search button and you’ll be taken to the search results page. From there you can filter your search results by location, date, newspaper title and article type.

For instance, if you are specifically interested in stories around the Chelsea Flower Show in 1955, you can use the date filters to focus on that year alone.

1955 Chelsea Flower Show
The Tatler, Wednesday 25 May 1955

3. When you’ve found a page you’d like to view, click the thumbnail or heading to be taken to the page viewer.

Beware! You need to search for events as they were known at the time the newspapers were printed. For example, before 1913, The Chelsea Flower Show was called the The Great Spring Show so you should search for that name instead.

Search for images

Use our new In Pictures feature  if you’d like to discover historical photographs or illustrations of the Chelsea Flower Show or any other event.

The Queen visiting the 1959 Chelsea Flower Show

Simply search for an event in the same way you would in the full newspaper search. All of your results will be images rather than articles.

Where to next?

Start Searching the Archive Straight Away

Learn more useful hints & tips

Find out more about In Pictures

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