traditions | The British Newspaper Archive Blog

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Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week

This week at The Archive we marking the leap day of 29 February by adding 247,740 brand new pages, as well as examining the tradition of the leap year proposal. We’ve also added a duo of new titles, whilst we’ve updated 69 of our existing titles from across the world, from the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Caribbean, New Zealand and Hong Kong. So read on to discover more about the tradition of the leap year proposal, our

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Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week

To mark St Andrew’s Day this year, the day that celebrates the patron saint of Scotland, we’ve added a very special brand new title to The Archive, Scotland on Sunday, alongside 218,837 brand new pages from across the United Kingdom. That’s not it, we’ve also added one wonderfully named title from the county of Worcestershire, the Kidderminster Shuttle, whilst we’ve updated our existing titles from Carrickfergus to Croydon, from Coleshill to Crowthorne. So read on to discover more about our

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Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week

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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Christmas Parties Through The Ages

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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Hot off The Press – New Titles This Week

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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‘Strange Customs’ – Exploring the Ancient Origins and Traditions of Halloween

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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Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week

This week at The Archive we have been working hard to bring you an incredible 120,386 brand new pages – as well as twelve brand new titles in all! To celebrate St David’s Day this week, we have added a grand total of five brand new Welsh titles to our collection, including three historic Welsh-language newspapers. So read on to discover more about this bumper crop of new titles, and also to discover how St. David’s Day was celebrated in the Victorian era (hint, think food!). Register now and explore

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The Truth Behind the White Christmas Dream

On Christmas Day 1906 the city of Sheffield in the north of England saw the ‘heaviest Christmas snow for 25 years,’ as the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reports: On the evening of Christmas Day the snow began to fall, and yesterday morning the city was covered in a beautiful mantle of the purest white. Snow lay on the ground to the depth of about six inches, and, except in the streets, so remained until last night, when there was a further fall. Long

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‘To Be Queen o’ the May’ – The History of the May Queen

In this special blog we use the remarkable photographs and illustrations contained in our Newspaper Archive to trace the tradition of the May Queen over one hundred and fifty years, as well as exploring the origins of this fascinating ritual. We start out at Wymering, just outside of Portsmouth, in 1867. It was here, in the ‘latter part of the month of merrie May’, that a May Queen was crowned. The Illustrated Times tell us that the event is looked

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Halloween in Communities

Halloween in communities How Halloween is viewed varies from place to place and its traditions are just as diverse. A sense of how Halloween is treated in a given place can be glimpsed in its portrayal in cinema, music, and literature. Treat yourself to a poem written on the topic by John Mayn, printed in 1805 in The Scots Magazine. A notice in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News mentioned a Halloween tradition practised in ‘olden times’ in Scotland.   Another Halloween tradition we

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