This week at The Archive we have added another 160,900 brand new pages to our collection, as we welcome new newspapers from Newtownabbey in Northern Ireland, alongside new titles from the Berkshire area. Meanwhile, from Bracknell to Belfast, from Somerset to Scotland, we’ve updated a range of our existing titles.

So read on to discover more about our wonderful new and updated titles of the week. This week also marks 28 years since Irish actor Pierce Brosnan made his debut as James Bond, in what was the seventeenth film of the 007 franchise, GoldenEye.

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The first of our new trio of newspapers this week is the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times, which is the sister paper of last week’s new title, the Carrick Times and East Antrim Times. With a history that stretches back to 1897, the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times appears every Thursday, and is known to publish ‘the best news, features, entertainment and sport for the people of the borough from Ballyclare to Monkstown and Glengormley to Jordanstown and many more places in between.’

Published from Glengormley, in Newtownabbey, a large settlement north of Belfast’s city centre, the newspaper covers the seven villages that form that particular area: Carmoney, Glengormley, Jordanstown, Monkstown, Whiteabbey, Whitehouse and Whitewell.

A packed read, with photographs and articles pertaining to the local news of the Newtownabbey area, in the 1980s the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times would set you back 28p, whilst by the end of the 1990s, in 1999, the newspaper cost double, retailing at 56p per edition.

Like its sister paper, the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times is still in print to this day.

Moving on from Newtownabbey, we cross the Irish sea to arrive in the Royal County of Berkshire, in the south of England, to introduce our next two new titles of the week, which also happen to be sister papers. First up is the Ascot Times, which ran with the subheading ‘A friend dropping in.’

Published every Thursday, the Ascot Times covered the news from the Berkshire town of Ascot in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, which is famous for being the home of the Ascot Racecourse. Costing fourteen pence, it was the sister paper of the Reading Evening Post, the Wokingham Times, the Bracknell Times, and the Crowthorne Times, the latter paper happening to be our last new title of the week.

The Crowthorne Times also appeared every Thursday, at the same cost of 14p. It circulated in the Bracknell Forest village of Crowthorne, which is the home of both the public school Wellington College and the high-security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor. The Crowthorne Times also served the Berkshire town of Sandhurst, which is where the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is based, as well as circulating in the town of Yateley, which sits just across the county border in Hampshire.

That may be it from our new titles of the week, from Newtownabbey and Berkshire, but with a dozen of our existing titles being updated over the last seven days there are still plenty of discoveries for you to make. The Belfast News-Letter sees the biggest additions of the week, with over 34,000 brand new pages joining its ranks, while not too far behind are fellow Northern Irish titles the Lurgan Mail with over 21,000 brand new pages, and the Londonderry Sentinel with over 17,000 brand new pages.

Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, this week sees over 10,000 brand new pages joining the Edinburgh Evening News, whilst over 8,000 brand new pages have joined Somerset title the Shepton Mallet Journal. Another update of note are the new pages we have added to special sporting title the Football Post (Nottingham).

November 1995 – Bond is Back

Whilst we were browsing through pages from the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times from the year 1995, we came across a significant cinematic anniversary. This week, specifically the 24 November, marks 28 years since the release of the seventeenth Bond film, GoldenEye, which starred Irish actor Pierce Brosnan for the very first time.

A day before this important release, the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times published an article entitled ‘Bond is back,’ with the opening line of the piece describing how ‘Pierce Brosnan takes over the Bond mantle as Ian Fleming’s Agent 007 swings into action for the 17th time in the new film ‘Goldeneye.’’

The Newtownabbey Times describes how the film is ‘set in the years following the fall of the Berlin wall and with it the Eastern European socialist regimes,’ and how it was filmed across the world, with locations ranging from ‘Puerto Rico to Switzerland, St. Petersburg to the French Riviera, though major sequences were filmed at a studio on the outskirts of London.’

The article then turned its attention to Drogheda-born Pierce Brosnan, who it reveals watched Goldfinger ‘as a 10-year-old boy in 1964.’ But those behind the new Bond film felt he was ‘absolutely the right choice,’ producer Michael Wilson describing how:

‘He has the looks, the charm, and the sophistication that the part requires.’

Pierce Brosnan was starring alongside Sean Bean, Robbie Coltrane and Alan Cumming, as well as Desmond Llewelyn, who reprised his role as Q. GoldenEye was notable in other ways too, as it saw the debut of Dame Judi Dench as M, and also ‘the aptly named young Shakespearean actress’ Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny.

As for the so-called ‘Bond girls,’ the Newtownabbey Times and East Antrim Times describes how:

James Bond’s two leading ladies come from very different backgrounds. Izabella Scorupco was tracked down on the Baltic island of Gotland, speaks four languages and has already made her mark in Swedish films. Famke Janssen, Dutch born but settled in America for the past decade, plays Zenia a beautiful yet deadly assassin.

GoldenEye went on to receive a positive critical reception, and is often viewed as Pierce Brosnan’s best James Bond film. It has been subsequently voted in a 2021 poll as the best Bond film of all time.

Find out more about James Bond films, cinema history, and much more besides, in the pages of our newspapers today.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated twelve of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a FREE sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.