After a brief sabbatical, ‘The Great British Story: A People’s History’ series returns to the TV tonight. The main subject in tonight’s programme is the Reformation, and the different effects it had on England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. In particular, we’re looking forward to learning about the religious ideas that emerged from the town of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire. Apparently, the radical ideas that emerged from Scrooby influenced the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ and, in turn, the USA. It should be fascinating! – …

We’re always interested to read about other digitisation projects, and were wide-eyed with wonder to learn about the project that the British Library is going to be working on with the Qatar Foundation. We can’t wait to see all the maps and manuscripts that are going to be digitised! – http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/18/british-library-india-office-qatar Some manuscripts that were digitised earlier…you can see some digitised examples of the wonderful manuscripts from this project on the Press Section of the British Library website. – http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/Transforming-our-understanding-of-Middle-Eastern-history-The-British-Library-and-Qatar-Foundation-unveil-project-to-digitise-half-a-million-pages-of-archive-material-5b8.aspx

If you missed the ‘Laptop Library’ Radio 4 programme about the British Library’s Newspaper Collection at Colindale that was broadcast this morning, you can still listen to it on the iPlayer via the link below. What can we say? We’re thrilled (and starstruck!) to have shared the same stage, albeit fleetingly, as ‘the Shipping Forecast’… – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01kt6qw/Laptop_Library/

Just a wee note to let folk know that Radio 4 will be broadcasting its Laptop Library programme about the British Library’s Newspaper Collection on Friday 20 July at 11am (GMT). Presented by former librarian, Laurie Taylor, the programme will discuss the newsprint treasure contained in the Collection at Colindale Library, and will also highlight the ongoing project to digitise 40 million newspaper pages for the British Newspaper Archive website. – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kt6qw

We saw this excellent infographic that explains the origins and meanings of Irish surnames, and thought it would be of interest to people who use the British Newspaper Archive to research family ancestors from ‘the Emerald Isle’. – http://www.goireland.com/craic/irish-family-names.htm We have several historical Irish newspapers available in the Archive. For people looking to research ancestors in the Belfast area, there is ‘The Belfast News-Letter’ from 1828 to 1900. For the Cork area, we have the ‘Cork Examiner’ from 1841 to 1926. …

A special nod today to William Makepeace Thackeray, who was born in Calcutta on 18 July 1811. To mark the date of Thackeray’s birth, we’ve posted a newspaper story from 1885 that reports on a lecture that was given in York about the novelist’s work and life. It’s a fascinating lecture that considers the moral conduct theme that dominated Thackeray’s writing. The Archive contains 100s of articles about Thackeray – so why not try a few searches and learn how …

‘If music be the food of life, then play on.’ The 118th season of the Proms starts tonight at the Royal Albert Hall. To celebrate this wonderful event, we’ve posted two newspaper reports about the 1941 Proms. Due to fire damage during ‘the Blitz, the Proms were moved that year from Queen’s Hall to the Royal Albert Hall. In the first of these reports, you can read about the concerns that were raised regarding the inferior acoustics of the Royal …