The ancestors of Alex Kingston will be featured in tonight’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? In addition to learning about the death of her great-grandfather in World War One, Alex will be trying to discover if there is any Jewish ancestry in her family tree. In the trailer for the programme, it looks like historical newspapers are one of the resources used for Alex’s research – so we’re really looking forward to see which newspapers are featured! …

We’re very much looking forward to watching Annie Lennox in tonight’s episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ From what we’ve heard about tonight’s show, we believe it’s going to be a very moving programme. It seems that, in particular, a kirk session record from the mid-18th Century will arouse Annie’s righteous anger. It’ll be interesting to see if Annie’s research involves using any old newspapers – if so, we’ll see if we can find these stories in the Archive. …

We were greatly moved by the stories of Gregg Wallace’s family ancestors in last night’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ programme. In particular, the story of the child killed by fire due to the knocking over of a paraffin lamp was especially poignant. Indeed, a similar story was aired in the previous week’s episode when Samantha Womack was learning about her ancestors. We’ve been looking in the Archive and have found some of the stories and people mentioned in …

We’re really looking forward to watching the episode two of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ tonight. In tonight’s programme, ‘Masterchef’ presenter, Gregg Wallace, looks to learn more about his family ancestors and, in particular, to solve the mystery of what happened to his great-grandfather, who seemingly abandoned his wife and children. In last week’s show, great use was made of old newspapers to shed light (and character) on the stories of Samantha Womack’s ancestors. So we’re hoping that old …

The first programme in the new series of Who Do You Think You Are? was shown on BBC1 last night, and it was fascinating. Samantha Womack, the former ‘Eastenders’ actress, discovered some amazing and revealing stories about several of her ancestors – including a very sad story about her g-grandfather. It was also great to see how using old newspaper for family history research can help to shed light on the lives (and characters) of her ancestors. If you missed …

The new series of Who Do You Think You Are? starts tonight, and we’re really looking forward to it. We’ve seen the trailer for the programme and noticed that old newspapers are being used to find interesting stories about the ancestors of the celebrity guests. The actress, Samantha Womack (nee Janus), is the first person featured in the new series – you can watch a wee snippet of tonight’s programme at the ‘WDYTYA’ website. – BBC1, Wednesday 15 August, 21:00. …

The final episode of ‘The Great British Story: A People’s History’ TV series will be broadcast on Friday 10 August, and covers the period from 1897 to 2012. We had a look at the trailer on the website and there is some terrific footage of the Chainmakers’ Strike in the Black Country in 1910. BBC2, Friday 10 August, 21:00. – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lvcn4

We watched ‘The Great British Story: A People’s History’ BBC TV programme last Friday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The organisers of the programme are doing roadshows in June, and we noticed they’re visiting Liverpool on Saturday 2 June. This event takes place at the Museum of Liverpool, runs from 10am to 5pm and admission is free. – http://www.bbc.co.uk/thingstodo/activity/bbc-the-great-british-story-06/occurrence/95984

  29 November 2011 Murder, mania and a leech-powered weather machine: up to 4 million pages of historical newspapers now searchable online at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk –    Unparalleled access to a treasure trove of stories –    Up to 4 million pages from the British Library’s newspaper collections –    Will transform family history research The British Library and online publisher brightsolid today launch a website that will transform the way that people use historical newspapers to find out about the …