As it’s the height of spooky season we’re exploring the history of Halloween at The Archive, with the help of the 93,381 brand new pages that we have added to our collection over the last seven days. Meanwhile, we’re delighted to welcome one brand new newspaper title to The Archive, which is the Middlesex & Surrey Gazette, whilst we have made exciting updates to some of our existing titles from across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. So read on to …
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As Christmas is once more upon us, and the world slowly starts to go back to normal after several years of lockdowns, Christmas parties are again back in vogue. It got us wondering here at The Archive how the Christmas party has changed and developed over time. Naturally, we turned to our newspapers to discover more, learning how the key components of food, drink and music have always been part of historic Christmas celebrations. So in this special blog, we …
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This week at The Archive we are celebrating reaching the fantastic milestone of 50 million pages – all now available to search. When The Archive was launched over 10 years ago we could not have dreamed of reaching this incredible figure, and we’re not stopping here. Expect to see millions more pages joining our collection over the next months and years, with exciting new titles joining us from across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and beyond. Find out more about this wonderful milestone, as well as …
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We may be on the run up to Christmas now, but here at The Archive we have been as busy as ever, adding 140,040 brand new newspaper pages over the past seven days, with the addition of eight brand new titles from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland over the last week. Meanwhile, we have updated fifteen of our existing titles, including updates to some of our recently added titles too. So read on to discover more about all of our new titles of the week, and to …
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This week at The Archive we have been busy adding an incredible 167,444 brand new pages to our collection, with nineteen new titles added in all. And this week’s new titles have an especially Scottish theme, with a lucky thirteen new titles added from Scotland alone over the past seven days. Meanwhile, we have added six historic London titles, digitised as part of the British Library’s Heritage Made Digital programme, and updated fifteen of our existing newspaper titles, including pages from Wales and the 1700s. So read on to discover about …
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Nowadays, we tend to think of Halloween as a thoroughly modern phenomenon, an American Hallmark holiday. But using newspapers from the Victorian era, accessed through The Archive, we will discover in this blog how Halloween is a thoroughly ancient phenomenon. We will look at the ancient origins of the October festival, and explore its traditions, some of which have lasted through to this day, like bobbing for apples, and others that have fallen by the wayside, for example the day’s …
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Our familiar Christmas customs – decorating our houses with holly and ivy, enjoying chocolate yule logs and giving presents – have, for the most part, their origins in ancient pagan practices. In this special blog, using articles taken from the rich pages of the British Newspaper Archive, we take a look at how our Christmas traditions have evolved through time, with Druid, Roman and Norse influences. Want to learn more? Register now and explore The Archive From Saturnalia to The …
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Valentine’s Day in its present iteration is inexorably linked to both romantic love and commercialism. It inspires strong feelings, both for and against this day of chocolate boxes and heart-shaped cards. However, the day and its traditions have not been static. In performing a simple search for ‘Valentine’s Day’ on The British Newspaper Archive, you can start to see the ways in which the holiday — and its reception — have changed (and, occasionally, stayed the same) over the years. …