We are excited to be hurtling towards the 7 million page mark! However, you may have noticed that our page counter and ‘Recently Added Issues’ has slowed down over the past few days . . . We are currently working on upgrading our newspaper ingest system which means that there will be a slow-down in terms of the number of pages that we add to the site over the next week. We apologise for this but are looking forward to …

We were delighted (and just a little star-struck!) to see John Bishop using the BNA website in last night’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ programme. John was looking for information on his gg-grandfather, Charles Bishop, who left the army in the 1850s to pursue a musical career, and he found several stories in the Archive about his musical ancestor. We’re going to post a couple of these stories on the blog shortly. But, in the meantime, if you live …

– Later today, the British Newspaper Archive will reach the 6 million page mark on its first birthday The British Newspaper Archive celebrates its first birthday today, as it nears the 6 million page milestone. With a target of 40 million fully-searchable pages by 2021, this 10-year project is the biggest digitisation of newspapers to take place in the UK. The online archive holds stories of all human life, ranging from a heart-rending story of a child transported to Australia …

We’re looking forward to learning about the ancestors of John Barnes in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ The listing for the show on the BBC website mentions ‘secret telegrams’ and internment, so we think this will be a very interesting programme, which will shed light on Jamaica’s struggle for independence. Oh, and we’ll be looking out for any historical newspapers that are used in the research on his ancestors. – BBC1, Wednesday 17 October, 21:00. – …

The wedding notice for the marriage of Miss Adeline Blois – The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Friday 2 June 1905 We loved learning about the ancestors of Celia Imrie in the most recent episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Truly, it was a fascinating mixture of alleged treason, political intrigue and murder – just the sort of thing that people are well curious about. Although Celia Imrie’s family ancestors from the 17th Century might be just beyond …

Being a curious bunch, we did a quick search in the Archive to see what we could find out about William Roache’s family ancestors. We searched for the surname, ‘Waddicor’, and then used the website’s filtering options to find stories for the late 19th Century in the Blackpool and Darwen areas – which is where William’s family lived. We found loads of stories, and think that many of these stories will be about family ancestors of William Roache. We also found a report …

We really enjoyed hearing about the ancestors of William Roache in last night’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ In particular, we loved learning about the evolution of Blackpool as a blingy mecca for tourists, and the very interesting role that William’s ancestors played in the development of the city. If you live in the UK and missed the programme, you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer. – www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n2thm/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are_Series_9_William_Roache/

The ancestors of William Roache are up for inspection in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ We’re especially looking forward to learning about his entrepreneurial great-grandfather, who dealt in some very unusual wares in 19th Century Blackpool.  Curious and curiouser. . . We hope that, as in last week’s show on Alex Kingston, old newspapers will be used to add colour and character to the lives of William Roache’s family ancestors. – BBC1, Wednesday, 26 September, 21:00 …

We really enjoyed watching the programme about Alex Kingston’s ancestors in this week’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ We especially liked the information that Alex discovered by searching in historical newspapers. We did a quick search for one of Alex Kingston’s family ancestors (Elizabeth Braham) in the Archive and found the following stories. As you can see, the old newspaper stories that Alex Kingston found certainly added colour to the BMD records that she’d previously been looking …