Sound and vision blog

Guest blog by Megan Thomas (ESRC CASE PhD student and Graduate Impact Assistant) and Dr Jonathan Hogg (Co-I on 'An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans'), University of Liverpool.

The launch of ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’ on the 12th of September at The British Library marks the culmination of a two-year project, funded by the Office For Veterans’ Affairs, that captures the testimony and life stories of over 40 nuclear test veterans. This special event will feature the premiere of our 20-minute project film, The Greatest Force on Earth and introduce the major web resource ‘Voices of British Nuclear Test Veterans’ which was created with the National Life Stories team.

At the heart of the project is the wish to capture the voices of those men who witnessed a series of events that forever changed the world around us. The project team formed close connections with the men who witnessed atomic detonations as part of the British nuclear testing programme in the 1950s and 60s, focusing on the whole lives of the veterans to understand the wider meaning and impact of participating in this Cold War activity. The vivid testimony captured by the project team illuminates the diverse life experiences of nuclear test veterans, and several outputs from the project have been created to promote recognition and awareness of this complex and contested history.

A still from our project film The Greatest Force on Earth, directed by Sasha Snow, showing nuclear test veteran Frank Bools next to a picture of his wife.

When planning the project film with director Sasha Snow we wanted to capture the different ways in which participating in the British nuclear test programme shaped and impacted upon the life of Frank Bools, a veteran who we had interviewed as part of our project. Frank was a Royal Engineer who helped build the main base camp on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean in 1958. We came to realise that the film also mirrored the interview process, capturing both an intimate portrait of Frank but also how talking with him revealed remarkable recollections and anecdotes about his life. The emotive film illuminates the complicated life-long legacy of being a nuclear test veteran and speaks to the universal experiences of love and loss, while also exploring the forces of creation and destruction.

To accompany this unique and original interpretation of nuclear test veteran experience, the project team commissioned comic artist Gareth Sleightholme to create These Atomic Lives. The 20-page comic, which forms part of the educational resources created as part of the project, draws upon nuclear test veteran testimony and contemporary sources materials, such as photographs and radio shows, to offer a snapshot of life abroad working on the nuclear test programme. It also reflects on the inter-generational legacy of Cold War nuclear testing.

A sneak preview from our project comic These Atomic Lives illustrated by Gareth Sleightholme

Of course, the interviews with nuclear test veterans serve as the centrepiece of our project. Terry Hilliard, who served as Squadron Pilot and acting Flight Commander in 76 Squadron during Operation Grapple, flew a ‘sniffer plane’ through a nuclear mushroom cloud to collection radioactive air samples as part of the Grapple Z test series in 1958. He described the moment of detonation in the following clip:

Terry Hilliard describes witnessing Grapple Z

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Terry Hilliard, Squadron Pilot and Primary Sample Sniffer for the third detonation of Grapple Z. Photo © Terry Hilliard, used with permission.

The project team commissioned eight essays based around remarkable clips like this, and they will appear on the project website in September 2025. In her project essay Dr Laura Considine reflects on the challenges faced by veterans as a result of their extraordinary experiences. The interviews illuminate veterans’ conflicting pride in their national service and helping to ensure the policy of nuclear deterrence, alongside ethical concerns for their part in testing the type of bomb that John Morris, who served in the Army during Operation Grapple, described as a ‘monster’.

John Morris on creating 'a monster'

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Dr Chris Hill’s interview with the late Ken McGinley, who described in detail his role in the establishment of the British Nuclear Test Veteran Association (BNTVA) in 1983, is six hours long and stands as a significant record of both Ken’s involvement in the nuclear testing programme and the reasons why test veterans spent years campaigning for justice and recognition. In one clip from Ken’s interview, which is featured in Dr Fiona Bowler’s essay on campaigning, we are told about the origins of the BNTVA.

Ken McGinley recalls the origins of the BNTVA

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Ken McGinley speaking at a press conference in Japan. Photo © BNTVA Museum, used with permission.

We are proud that this project helps ensure that the stories of nuclear test veterans are heard, and that the interviews will be stored for future generations at The British Library. We have already reached out to new audiences, and a recent School Citizen Assembly event in Liverpool demonstrated the power of bringing nuclear test veterans and other stakeholders face-to-face with young people.

Funded by the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’ was led by Dr Chris Hill (PI) from The University of South Wales and Dr Jonathan Hogg (Co-I) from the University of Liverpool, in partnership with The British Library. The project team would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the nuclear test veterans that were part of this project.

Tickets are available now for Veterans Voices: Legacies of Britain's Nuclear Testing Programme, the launch event at the British Library on 12 September 2025.

Bluegill, a high altitude detonation over Christmas Island during Operation Dominic. Photo by National Defense Agency. Public domain, via the US National Records and Archives Administration.

In July – in a first for the British Library Oral History team – we held a reflective listening session at a major UK agricultural event: Groundswell. Now in its ninth year, Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival takes place each summer at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire, providing a forum for anyone interested in food production and the environment to learn about the theory and practice of regenerative agriculture.

Inside the Workshop Tent. Photo: Angela Cassidy.

In the Workshop Tent, Paul Merchant and Mary Stewart (Oral History, The British Library) and Angela Cassidy (University of Exeter) played audio extracts from two National Life Stories collections: ‘An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain’ (generously supported by Arcadia) and ‘Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration’ (recorded in partnership with the NERC funded RENEW Programme at the University of Exeter). With some trepidation at the size of the venue for the listening session, we were utterly delighted that 160 farmers, researchers, agricultural advisers, ecologists and others duly pitched up with open ears to listen and respond together to 12 excerpts from the in-depth oral histories.

In one of the audio clips, historical geographer John Sheail reflects on attempts by ecologists and agricultural scientists to bridge the working worlds of farming and environment in the 1980s and 1990s:

John Sheail on beginnings of positive relations between ecologists and scientists

Download John Sheail_transcript

In another, co-founder of Groundswell John Cherry speaks of his joy at seeing farmland birds return to fields under ‘no-till’ (no-ploughing) systems:

John Cherry on the return of farmland birds to no till fields

Download John Cherry_transcript

John Cherry (right) with Paul Merchant outside the Workshop Tent. Photo: Mary Stewart.

In the session’s final extract, Northern Ireland farmer John Rankin reminds us to listen to earlier generations as we experiment with farming systems fit for the future:

John Rankin on learning from past farming practice

Download John Rankin_transcript

John Rankin and sister in the 1960s (top) and John Rankin’s father and grandfather in 1933 (bottom). Courtesy of Ian Rankin.

These and other audio clips – many of which you can listen to on a British Library Soundcloud playlist – prompted much thought and discussion. The hubbub of conversation in the Workshop Tent after we played each cluster of clips was amazing to experience and we are convinced of the role of oral history in helping to shape agricultural-environmental practice and policy in the present and future. The session at Groundswell is one in a series of interactive sessions in summer 2025 as part of an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award (University of Exeter Translational Funding). We are currently assessing how NLS can raise further funds for interviewing and outreach in this subject area.

Sounds of soil sign. Photo: Paul Merchant.

Elsewhere at Groundswell, other kinds of listening experience were on offer. Following the sign in the photograph, we found ourselves listening to subterranean sounds of soil biology recorded by researchers at Rothamsted Research and a number of universities.

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Paul Merchant, Mary Stewart (National Life Stories, The British Library)
Angela Cassidy, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw (RENEW Programme, University of Exeter)

Earlier this year, the Library was delighted to host a series of recording sessions with the four co-editors of Clod Magazine. For those of you who don't already know, Clod is an independent magazine, founded in Luton in 1987, and now approaching its 40th issue. It appears irregularly, with publication ceasing entirely for seven years at one point. ‘No one noticed’, says their Facebook page.

The Clod editors moonlight as members of a similarly long-established music group called the Knockouts. While the magazine has its origins in the indie music fanzine scene of the 1980s, and maintains a DIY cut-and-paste aesthetic, it is not much concerned with music - and is not itself a fanzine.

Rather than music, the substance here is art, humour, and a decidedly prickly and surreal form of social comment. If the Vorticist artist and writer Wyndham Lewis had lived in South Bedfordshire in the second half of the twentieth century, he might well have come up with something like Clod. As with Wyndham Lewis’s provocative journal Blast, Clod has a penchant for morally upbraiding its readership through didactic and slightly deranged polemics. 

2024 saw the publication of the collected Clod Magazine issues 1-21 in one bumper 660pp volume. Early issues are out-of-print and impossible to find so this initiative was very welcome. I’m pleased to say the Library has acquired a copy for its collection.

It seemed a good time to conduct some interviews on the history of the magazine and to record some readings and, happily, everybody agreed to participate.

ABOVE Clod editors, clockwise from top left: Stephen Whiting; Tim Kingston; Andy Whiting; Andrew Kingston.

The readings were drawn not just from Clod but from a range of related publications, including the short-lived football fanzine TOWN, and Tim Kingston’s 1998 book Kenilworth Sunset? A Luton Town supporter’s journal. We also recorded a selection from the long-running ‘Luton Haiku’ series (five volumes published to date) and some of Andrew Kingston’s non-Clod solo works.

An exciting exclusive was Andy Whiting’s very funny account of the pleasures of following Hitchin Town FC (aka the Canaries). All being well, this should be published in Clod 40.

Here is a short extract from the recordings. This is Stephen Whiting reading from Clod 36: We queue up for boiled fish

ABOVE hand-stamped embellishments are a common feature.

Blog by Rosa Kurowska Kyffin, interviewer for National Life Stories.

Today, 7th March, would mark the 71st birthday of Rory Young: sculptor, stone carver, letterer, and building conservator, who sadly died in 2023. In the autumn of 2022, I had the opportunity to interview Rory for the National Life Stories collection Artists’ Lives. We arranged this interview following Rory’s terminal diagnosis earlier in the year and a concerted effort by his friends and family as well as the team at National Life Stories to ensure his memories were recorded for the archive.

Portrait of Rory Young at interview, by Rosa Kurowska Kyffin, October 2022.

The number of different professions that Rory Young mastered and the difficulty of finding one simple word for his work are evident in his many titles above. Indeed, Rory found it difficult to limit his focus to one career while having such a myriad of interests in the arts and built environment; he viewed himself, in his own words, as ‘an artificer’. His magical home – an early nineteenth-century stone town house, carefully restored over four decades and brimful with diverse works of art, objects and gifts from a wide network of beloved friends – speaks to this glowing interest he had in life and the world.

It was a difficult interview in some ways. His deteriorating health was an obvious factor, but also was the sheer scope of his view: it is hard to contain – even in many hours of recording – the variety of a life so richly lived. Rory burst with energy and ideas that sparked from one another, leading us forward or backwards decades at times; or leaping from debates on the nature of art/craft and the growth of conceptualism to anecdotes from his deep knowledge of architectural history; to lyrical descriptions of his work designing, limewashing, painting, carving. Sometimes recordings would be interrupted as he leapt up to dash off around the house to bring back an object or image for us to examine; thankfully, most times I managed to catch the microphone before he took our kit with him!

Rory was born and brought up close to Cirencester, his interview revealing a deep connection to the locale. His interest in both art and historic buildings was encouraged in childhood by his artist mother, Jill Young, who had trained at Wimbledon Art School in 1940s and who was inspired by Gerald Cooper, the Principal during her time there. She encouraged Rory and his sister Katrina by covering the walls of their home with paper for them to adorn and decorate. Jill Young hated the normal female pursuit of shopping in the town; instead, she spent time in the many historic buildings of Gloucestershire, educating her small children about the design and meaning of the architecture. This interest went to such an extent that Rory remembers, when just a small boy, his looking up at the ceiling in a local church and exclaiming ‘Look Mummy, fan vaulting!’, to the surprise of passers-by.

Later, during his study at Camberwell College of Arts in the 1970s, he became the youngest member of the Camberwell Preservation Society. This early interest developed into a passion for vernacular architecture. He saw the greenest way of building as restoring the old – thus lamenting the waste he saw as different fashions swept through architecture during his lifetime. This interest grew from his early days at Camberwell, when he would cycle around the desolate docks of East London, often at night, to sketch and paint the buildings being pulled down there.

Rory Young describing the London docks

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Rory Young, Sketch for Thames-side Warehouse Demolition, 1976

As soon has he finished his studies, he pursued this fascination on a greater scale, embarking in 1976 on a two-year tour of the north of England, partly inspired by visiting the ‘Destruction of the Country House’ exhibition at the V&A. Living out of a van and recording meticulous notes and sketches, Rory travelled the length and breadth of England to visit the historic buildings and observe the industrial landscapes that were disappearing from England at that time. His descriptions of England at that intersection of the decline of heavy industry with the beginnings of a new market for heritage in the 1970s are a striking record of the time.

Rory’s fascination with buildings continued throughout his career. Creating works like the ‘Genesis Cycle’ at the west door of York Minster and the ‘Seven Martyrs’ for St Albans Cathedral, he saw himself adding layers of beauty in a century-spanning continuum of artists and craftspeople. His effort was to honour those buildings that formed the ‘biggest material evidence of our ancestors, of our past civilizations.’ He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, often frustrated with the contemporary art world’s conception of what constituted art: the move to conceptualism and resulting debates on the boundaries of art and craft did not align with his deeply held understanding of art that was not a snapshot of a moment, but of a record of long-lived history.

Rory Young on the nature of art

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Rory’s commitment to creating works of art that constituted ‘the huge broad sphere of the built environment’ did require huge effort, often over many years to achieve large commissions. We discussed the sheer physical toll of his output: working with stone or in clay; lifting and moving pieces or spending many hours deep in concentration carving a piece; the realities of stretching himself to finish jobs; and struggling when commissions went over time and budget. Despite these difficulties, it was clear that Rory found great joy in his work, a realisation he had from a young age when a chaplain had tried to help him understand the concept of heaven by pointing to the state of timeless concentration Rory would fall into when working on his artworks during school. This passion for work, friends, and beauty animated our time recording. I was inspired by such a vision: his lyrical, vivid way of speaking that meant he could explain history, as well as his own story, in his own words.

Rory Young on finding heaven in work

Download Heaven in work transcript

National Life Stories would like to extend our gratitude to all Rory’s friends and family for their dedication and support in raising the funds to record this interview.

Rory’s life history recording can be listened to on-site at the British Library (collection reference C466/425). Please contact the Listening and Viewing Service for more information.

Blog written by Neli Demireva and Paul Thompson.

The Pioneering Social Research project and the 2022 book Pioneering Social Research: Life stories of a Generation (Policy press), highlight the experiences and practices of a generation of academics active from the 1950s to the 1980s in British academia and wider research scene. Based on 58 life story interviews, available through the UK Data Service and archived as the oral history collection C1416 ‘Pioneers of Social Research’ at the British Library, the book captures some of the most magical moments of research realization. Those moments may be career defining but we also do not shy away from discussions of strife, of conflict, of struggle and acceptance. There is no satisfactory way in which a conventional sample of ‘pioneer’ social researchers could be created. To be recorded among our pioneers implies in itself some kind of success story in research: first and foremost in terms of intellectual discovery and influence, however also linked to taking a key position in the academic world and achieving, in Colin Bell’s (C1416/34) words, ‘a degree of celebrity’. The oldest interviewee, Raymond Firth (C1416/25), was born in 1901 and is exceptional in already being an active researcher in the interwar years. The youngest interviewee was born in 1949, Sara Arber (C1416/58), and all had begun their research careers by the 1970s. They had mainly made their key contributions by the 1980s, but several continued publishing into the 2000s. Altogether, 33 are with sociologists –most of whom first trained in other disciplines, especially anthropology –and 14 with lifelong anthropologists. There are also three interviewees from politics, two each from geography and economics, another two from statistics, and one from cultural studies. These are essentially British pioneers, although they worked worldwide.

On the practical side, the book and the oral history interviews can be seen as an example of ‘owning up’ – a set of illustrious researchers and academics take the reader or listener through their experiences of the research process. The book illustrates how empirical social research was conducted and given shape in mid-twentieth century Britain. Our Pioneers carried out much major work in terms of class, gender and ethnicity and the book captures something of the social and cultural contexts in which they worked and the dilemmas they faced. Thus, one should be able to open the book and read both about how David Butler (C1416/44) ‘finds his voice’ on TV, of the time Peter Townsend (C1416/23) spends working in a retirement institution while at the same time to get a feel, of the difficult time Ann Oakley (C1416/01) has in embarking on her PhD studies. 

Peter Townsend on Bath Attendant (C1416-23)

Download Peter Townsend on Bath Attendant (C1416-23) Transcript

Ann Oakley on The Parental Ethos (C1416-01)

Download Ann Oakley on The Parental Ethos (C1416-01) Transcript

The book and the oral history collection do have weaknesses with which we have explicitly engaged. Our 58 interviewees cannot be taken as ‘representative’ of a wider scholarly pool. They are unique cases, and there are many other researchers who if alive and willing could easily have been included, and some who may have made even greater contributions and told very different stories. Inevitably, some key researchers had already died before we could record them. We miss especially the stories which we might have had from Richard Titmuss (d. 1973), Max Gluckman (d. 1975), John Rex (d. 2011), Edward Shils (d. 1995) and Cathie Marsh (d. 1993). We cannot be sure of the memories of our tellers; like almost all historical sources, whether created in the past or subsequently, what they say sometimes may be factually incorrect. Regardless, they represent important historical sources of how the interviewees remember and retell their life stories. The Pioneers of Social Research collection is very much a living thing, and we are indeed adding to the pool of interviewees this year.

Crucially, however, the book and collection demonstrate how the Pioneers responded to challenges – personal and academic. These are very intimate stories, one that we hope the reader or listener will not rush through but will cherish and savour. The Pioneers were resilient, but above all, they proved to have the creative ability to turn the problems upside down and use them to develop their own thinking. In this, future generations can really find a rich source of inspiration – one that will continue to inform beyond the lifetime of the interviewees in this project. Our dear friend and co-author Ken Plummer (C1416/48) passed away last year and we cherish the ability to hear his warm and lively voice speaking his own life story of discovering his own sexuality, and developing a new field and establishing the journal Sexualities as well as struggling to cope with the pain of HIV research. All these recordings are available at the British library reading rooms in London and Boston Spa, as well as at the UK Data Service in Essex. We hope that many readers of ‘this lovely book’, as Mike Savage calls it, will similarly enjoy learning more about the Pioneers and will engage with their work, both the written publication and the full life story interviews.

Pioneers of Social Research can be found by searching C1416 at http://sami.bl.uk and can be listened to at the British Library reading rooms in St Pancras, London and Boston Spa, Yorkshire. For more information on similar collections please consult the collection guide 'Oral histories of social policy'.

Neli Demireva is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her research interests include migration, inter-ethnic ties, social cohesion, ethnic penalties and multiculturalism. She uses a variety of methods in her research, both quantitative and qualitative, and believes strongly in mixing methods to uncover the ‘deep stories’ of sociology.

Paul Thompson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He is Founder-Editor of Oral History and Founder of National Life Stories at the British Library. He is a pioneer of oral history in Europe and author of the international classic The Voice of the Past (4th edition 2017). His other books include The Edwardians and Living the Fishing. He is co-author of Growing Up in Stepfamilies, of The Myths We Live By (with Raphael Samuel), and (with Daniel Bertaux) Pathways to Social Class.

Ken Plummer (1946-2022) was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He researched and wrote widely on sexuality, especially lesbian, gay and queer studies. His methodological concerns were with the development of narrative, life story, symbolic interactionism and the post-modern turn.

Guest blog by Rosa Kurowska Kyffin, interviewer for National Life Stories.

Akyaaba Addai-Sebo standing in front of the King's Library at the British Library, St Pancras.

Earlier this summer the British Library recorded a life story interview with Akyaaba Addai-Sebo for the National Life Stories oral history collection Leaders of National Life. This in-depth interview covers his influential work as a campaigner and activist across three continents. From trade union organising in newly independent Ghana to his years in the US in the 1970s, where he studied peace-building in Washington and became close with many civil rights activists of the time, including Kwame Ture, Jewell Mazique and CLR James, who became a lifelong friend and mentor. The interview also covers his later peace-building work in Liberia and Sierra-Leone and environmental campaigning. In the UK Akyaaba has had a fundamental impact on politics and culture as one of the founders of the UK’s Black History Month. These clips explore the origins of this month, which today is as vital a part of autumn as the cooler days and bright colours of the turning leaves.

As a young child Akyaaba quickly developed a deep understanding of the impact of politics. In 1957 when Akyaaba was just seven years old, Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence from British colonial rule and established one of the first post-colonial governments in Africa. Caught up in the ‘dynamism of the times’, Akyaaba spent his childhood observing the rallies and activism of his community: a close-knit, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic compound in Asawase, one of many new projects built by the socialist Nkrumah government. His early political memories are of excitement and promise, but these hopes were soon dashed as the backlash of the European powers began. One of Akyaaba’s early memories was the assassination of Patrice Lumumba which he describes here.

Akyaaba Addai-Sebo recalls his earliest memory of political consciousness [BL REF C408/37]

Download Transcript – Akyaaba Addai-Sebo recalls an early memory of political consciousness

This incident and the betrayals that followed as later coups in Ghana took Nkrumah from power forged a powerful activist in Akyaaba, who has led a life dedicated to confronting injustice. As a child he was also frustrated by his experiences of education in the British colonial system, where he studied European classics, religion, geography and literature rather than his own region’s culture and history. He recognised the importance of the few teachers who went against this system. Later as a teenager he saw the importance of finding ‘cultural synergy’ though learning about Ghanaian and African culture and history in Nkrumah’s Young Pioneers and the Pan-African Youth Movement. In the US he also saw the impact of what was then called Negro History Week for African Americans, and the beginnings of the campaign to rename the period as Black History Month which is still celebrated there in February. In the US he became involved in delivering workshops in Washington libraries and museums and spoke at celebrations of African Liberation Day in Malcolm X Park.

His activism eventually took him back to Ghana and later to London, where he found safety having narrowly escaped persecution under the Jerry Rawlings regime in 1984. Through CLR James he became involved with a powerful group of activists based in Railton Road, Brixton, including Leila Hassan Howe, Darcus Howe and the Race Today collective. At the same time Akyaaba had started working at the Greater London Council (GLC). At the time the GLC was a place of pioneering social policy under the leadership of Ken Livingstone, as was the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), whose deputy leader Bernard Wiltshire Akyaaba worked closely with. The stewardship of Linda Bellos, Chair of the London Strategic Policy Committee (LSPC) and leader of Lambeth Council, and John McDonnell, Chief Executive of the Association of London Authorities (ALA), became crucial after the abolition of the GLC by the Margaret Thatcher government on 1 April 1986. It was an exciting time to be working in local government. With his boss and friend Ansel Wong, Akyaaba worked in the Ethnic Minorities Unit and it was there in the office that a chance encounter with a colleague set in motion the inspiration for Black History Month in the UK.

Akyaaba Addai-Sebo on the inspiration for UK Black History Month [BL REF C408/37]

Download Transcript – Akyaaba Addai-Sebo on the inspiration for UK Black History Month

In both the US and the UK Akyaaba had seen the impact that this lack of ‘cultural synergy’ was having on Black children and their families. He was shocked that here in the UK – the ‘mother of imperialism’ – that there was so little understanding of African history and civilisation. To rectify the damage done to children like Marcus and to eliminate the odious racism that plagued the UK Akyaaba worked hard to establish Black History Month. Here he recalls some of the conversations that fed into the founding of Black History Month, and why the choice of October is so significant.

Akyaaba Addai-Sebo explains why October was chosen as Black History Month [BL REF C408/37]

Download Transcript – Akyaaba Addai-Sebo explains why October was chosen as Black History Month

Akyaaba built support from all political parties, a process which his time in the US civil rights movement had prepared him well for. The UK’s first Black History Month events began with a series of historical talks and events in London in 1986 to which people ‘came in droves.’ Those events have now grown to become an integral part of the year with countless events happening across October and beyond across the whole country.

Rosa Kurowska Kyffin with Akyaaba Addai-Sebo at the British Library, St Pancras.

Akyaaba Addai-Sebo was interviewed by Rosa Kurowska Kyffin in 2023 for Leaders of National Life. The interview will be available to listen to at the British Library in early 2024, collection reference number C408/37.

Above: Edmundo Ros in Amsterdam, 1957. Photo by Harry Pot.

The Unlocking Our Hidden Collections initiative is the British Library challenging itself. With over 170 million items in the Library’s collections and an average of over 8,000 new items added every day, it is impossible to keep up. Processing and cataloguing backlogs mean that there are so many treasures that are ‘hidden’ from view and unable to be searched in any of the Library’s catalogues.

Unlocking Our Hidden Collections is a concerted effort to bring some of these to light. We are targeting specific collections across the Library’s many curatorial areas for detailed cataloguing where previously there was none at all. Collections in this initiative include manuscripts from the medieval to contemporary periods, charters, censuses, photographs, correspondences and music manuscripts. They also include recordings from the British Library sound archive. The project that I work on within Unlocking Our Hidden Collections is entitled ‘Rare and Unpublished World and Traditional Music’, which catalogues and ultimately makes publically available collections of sound recordings that would otherwise remain obscure.

As a cataloguer in this process, I have the absolute pleasure of listening to wonderful recordings of some of the most interesting musical cultures in the world, researching their context and diving into the recordists’ own experiences through their documentation and other material. So far, I’ve worked with collections of recorded music from Thailand, Malaysia, India, Nepal and Kenya from the 1960s to the 2000s, but today I want to highlight one specific collection, the Sue Steward Collection, which has the reference C1984 in our catalogue.

Sue Steward was a British journalist and DJ with a passion for the music of Latin America. Her British Library collection is composed of interviews that she made throughout her career from 1980 to 2005. Her coverage of Latin American musicians spans those of the classic dance styles of son, merengue and mambo and the pan-Latin styles of salsa, jazz and pop, including interviews with huge stars such as Celia Cruz, Gloria Estefan and Tito Puente. Many of her recordings were made in the UK, but she also recorded on her travels to the USA (particularly in the Latin American hotspots of New York City and Miami), Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Colombia, and the interviews became a significant part of the research for Steward’s book Salsa: Musical Heartbeat of Latin America (1999). Her renown and the fondness in which she was held within the world of Latin American music led to her being affectionately known as ‘La Reina’ and ‘La Stewarda’.

Her music interests were wider than just Latin music, however, and her collection reflects that, with interviews with musicians from the worlds of punk, post-punk and new wave, free jazz, sound art and the avant-garde (her interview with Diamanda Galás - see Diamanda Galás catalogue entry -  is a particular highlight), African and Middle Eastern music – sprinkled with recordings of live performances and radio clips too. And it doesn’t stop there – an interesting thread of interviews with visual artists becomes apparent, with sculptors, photographers, painters, ceramicists and art dealers all represented in the collection.

Above: The tapes of the C1984 Sue Steward Collection at the British Library. Photo by Jim Hickson.

The jewel of Sue Steward’s collection, however, has to be her extended interviews of Edmundo Ros. These have the British Library reference C1984/1-30. This is an example of one of the many Edmundo Ross catalogue entries.

Ros was a Trinidadian-Venezuelan musician who became famous as a bandleader and club proprietor in London in the 1940s. Through both his dance bands and his clubs, Ros was the first to bring Latin American music to wide appeal in the UK, performing arrangements of cha-chas, sambas, rumbas, mambos and tangos tempered with big band swing and light music to suit the tastes of a British audience unused to such exotic sounds. As well as his music, Ros also became famous as a respected member of high society, a rarity for a Black man at that time.

Intending to write an exhaustive biography of Ros, Steward recorded multiple interviews with him at his home in Xàbia, Spain between 2000 and 2005, when Ros was between 89 and 94 years old. These interviews are so detailed, thorough and lengthy that they essentially represent an oral history. All told, Steward recorded over 27 hours of interview, including sections where the two of them look through old photographs, watch video tapes and listen to his old records.

What becomes clear is Ros’s abilities as a storyteller, his flair for the dramatic, and a playful enjoyment of his own self-mythology. Together, Ros and Steward discuss his musical life, including his time as a student at the Royal Academy of Music (where he was later made a fellow); performing at clubs during the height of the Blitz; the ins-and-outs of running a high-class ‘dinner and supper club’ from the 1940s to the 1960s; his fame, struggles and the eventual dissolution of his band.

They also talk about his (just as explosive) personal life such growing up in Trinidad and Venezuela, and his endeavours to become a perfect English gent, which led to many encounters within high society, including performing at the personal invitations of George IV, Elizabeth II and Rainier III of Monaco, his run-ins with Prince Philip, future Duke of Edinburgh, and his part in the first great post-war sex scandal. Clearly opinionated, Ros always seemed keen to give his strong (and perhaps, at times, controversial) thoughts on race, status, music and politics.

Although Steward’s biography of Ros was never completed before her sudden death in 2017, these interviews amount to Ros’s own autobiography, his stories told in his own words. Through the diligent work of Sue Steward, and now through the activities of the Unlocking Our Hidden Collections initiative, those stories – and those of many other musicians, artists and arts professionals – are now discoverable to the world through the British Library.

By Jim Hickson, Hidden Collections Audio Cataloguer, World and Traditional Music

As September starts in the northern hemisphere, for me (and I suspect many others) this means one thing - 'back to school'. This could be both memories of one's own school days, or the relief as a parent or carer that ordinary term time routines can resume. From my childhood I think of the restrictive feeling of school shoes on my feet, the formality of school uniform, the confines of the classroom and - for those of us for whom school was a mostly happy experience - the reunion with classmates after a long summer break.

Almost all of the oral history interviews in the British Library’s vast collection cover educational experience - as it is a foundational era in most lives. This means we have myriad accounts that explore a variety of time periods, educational establishments, social experiences, teaching methods and learning styles through personal testimony.  

A great example is from the interview with Elisabeth Standen (1944-2020): a writer, community organiser and consultant on disability and equalities. It was common in the 1950s for children with disabilities to attend specialist boarding schools, even if their parents wanted them at home - as was the case with Elisabeth.

In this recording, made in 1999 with Helen Lloyd, Elisabeth describes bedtimes at her first boarding school, Exhall Grange in Warwickshire. When she was a few years older than the period she recounts in this clip, Elisabeth describes how she became blind, which to me makes the detailed visual description in this interview even more compelling. Close your eyes, listen to Elisabeth and see if you can picture the school setting and bedroom she describes.

Listen to Elisabeth Standen interviewed by Helen Lloyd

Download Transcript of Elisabeth Standen interviewed by Helen Lloyd

If you want to hear more about experiences of home and the sounds of domestic life, dip into 'If homes had ears' a rich resource of over 70 audio clips explored in themed essays. This resource was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of 'Unlocking Our Sound Heritage.'

Elisabeth's interview (reference C900/18556) was recorded in 1999 by Helen Lloyd for BBC Radio as part of the ground-breaking BBC and British Library Millennium Memory Bank project which explored British life at the end of the 20th century. The Millennium Memory Bank holds over 5,000 oral histories recorded by local and national BBC radio stations, from which each participating station broadcast a series of programmes on 16 common themes. All of the full unedited recordings and the subsequent programmes are archived and made available at the British Library.

This Recording of the Week is by Mary Stewart, Lead Curator of Oral History.