Sound and vision blog

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With Halloween creeping up on us, I asked our wildlife curator to share with me her favourite spooky sounds. I’ve heard screeching barn owls. Hissing rattlesnakes. My favourite though: the chorus of howling wolves, recorded in Ontario, Canada in 2000.  

Listen to howls of the Gray Wolf

There’s something both serene and terrifying about the howl of a wolf. The wail floats on the edge of liminality: being both from the human world, yet also otherworldly. The calls mesmerise you – drawing you in, whilst making you want to retreat at the same time. They’re the epitome of the sublime.  

On this recording, I particularly liked how bird song is seamlessly dispersed among the howling at the beginning. You can almost picture dusk falling over the forest with the last birds of the day fleeing, before the creatures of the night ascend their sylvan thrones.  It conjures up that cinematic image of a majestic wolf pack in silhouette against a full moon. Contrary to popular imagination though, our wildlife expert informs me that it’s pure myth that wolves howl at the moon!  

As foreboding as the howls may be to the human ear, for the wolves, they’re a chorus of unity as they call out to their fellow pack-mates to prepare for their nocturnal hunt. Even the pups can be heard with their squeaky howls joining in with their parents.  

You can listen to a longer version of this recording on our sounds website. 

This week’s recording of the week was chosen by Elliot Sinclair, Web Editor.  

In the Spoken English department we love dialects in all their varieties. Dialects are made up of accent, grammatical forms and vocabulary, and are often specific to or associated with a particular geographical location. As populations change, so do dialects, and therefore many people might think of these as a relic from the past, and even mourn their disappearance. But change is not loss, and so we’re always happy to find and share examples of dialect words in the wild – alive and well!

This conversation from The Listening Project was recorded in 2021, between two strangers in different parts of England. They were brought together to discuss their shared interest in a topic they both have different names for: gennels and alleys.

Katie, a mature student in Sheffield, spent her daily exercise time during the Covid-19 lockdowns exploring new areas in her local community. This sparked an interest in the gennels that she and her family discovered. After setting up social media accounts to document their expeditions, she received lots of positive feedback. Katie’s photos were so popular, that she has since produced a charity calendar to showcase some of her favourite gennels around Sheffield.

Over in Tewkesbury, Bill set up a similar activity - Project Alleycat - five years ago, aiming to instil local pride and promote the preservation of the alleys near to him. This has involved working with local artists and creatives, and the project has so far produced calendars, tea towels, maps and a phone app. In this first clip he explains how it all started, from concerns about big developments, to pro-active plans to help improve the environment.

Listen to Conversation between strangers (C1500/2202) clip 1

Download transcript Conversation between strangers clip 1

Traditionally, people where I live call these passageways “twittens”, but there are a range of names for these in different dialects – snicket, jitty, cut-through, vennel, jigger, tenfoot, ope... Katie’s favoured term “gennel” also has spelling and pronunciation variants - is it ginnel or gennel? A hard or a soft G sound? There’s also some debate about the subtle differences between these words – do they run between or behind houses? Do they always connect roads, or can they have a dead-end? In this clip, Katie and Bill compare some of the definitions and pronunciations that they have heard, and the long conversations that these can inspire.

Listen to Conversation between strangers (C1500/2202) clip 2

Download transcript Conversation between strangers clip 2

Despite these differences, one of the things that both speakers agree on is how these gennels and alleyways bring local people together - beyond just connecting neighbours geographically. They have seen a number of community-wide benefits growing out of their hobby, from public artworks to charity fundraising and a strong sense of ownership for people’s favourite locations. In this final clip they discuss what the very local focus of their projects means to them, and some of the positive outcomes.

Listen to Conversation between strangers (C1500/2202) clip 3

Download transcript Conversation between strangers clip 3

You can explore more about the differences between dialects on the Sounds website. A good place to start is the BBC Voices project (2004-2005), where groups of people across the UK spoke about their local language, based on given prompts. These conversations were then analysed to create an inventory of linguistic features for different dialects, and you will find a wide range of variants for “passageways” included. It’s also possible to explore back further, with large linguistic survey collections from the 1950s, plus recordings from the early twentieth century. Today, from The Listening Project, I was pleased to hear that the use (and popularity of use) of “gennels” has not diminished over time.

The Listening Project is an audio archive of personal conversations, collected by local and national BBC radio stations. From 2012 to 2022, people were invited to have a conversation recorded and broadcast (in edited form) by the BBC, and archived by the British Library. The full collection includes over two thousand recordings, preserved in full. You can listen to these through the Sounds website, and learn more about the project at the BBC.

All three audio clips are excerpts of 'Conversation between strangers Katie and Bill about passageways' (C1500/2202). You can listen to the full recording on our Sounds website.

Today's post was written by Sarah Kirk-Browne, Digital Multimedia Collections Cataloguer.

Image credits: Jonnie Robinson, Curator of Spoken English.

Mahomed's Baths from 1826. Alamy.

The NHS as we know it today has been built – and continues to be sustained – by migrant contributions. South Asians have played a major role in this. But did you know that we can place South Asians in the medical profession in Britain long before the NHS was formed? In fact, in this oral history clip from the Millennium Memory Bank (BBC) you can hear Bari Chohan describe how his family arrived in England in the 1870s, having practiced homeopathy and ophthalmology on the subcontinent. They then opened a series of medical clinics in various cities throughout the UK, including in Brighton, Harrogate, Sheffield, Bradford and Manchester. It was Bari’s great uncle Dr Chirag Din who practiced in Harrogate in the early 1920s. He later married his colleague and practice nurse, Florence, moving to her hometown of Middlesbrough, where he settled.

Listen to Bari Chohan interviewed by Neil Gander © BBC

Download Bari Chohan extract transcript

South Asians have not only been in Britain for a long period of time – longer than common perception – but they have been circulating within professional and community networks, actively shaping the island nation we know today. Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830s to the present is a new research project that sheds light on this British history.

The project will reveal stories like Bari’s in a new digital resource, exploring the significance of South Asian people and communities as agents of change to Britain's cultural, economic, political and social life from the period of empire in the 1830s to the present. The project team will conduct their own oral history interviews, in collaboration with The British Library, as well as showcase testimonies collected during other projects. This will be in conjunction with archival research. Remaking Britain is an AHRC-funded research project led by the University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London in partnership with the British Library.

We’d love to hear from anyone who has oral history collections on South Asians in Britain, expressions of interest in oral history participation, or any information relating to the rich history of South Asians in Britain from the 1830s to the present. You can find more information on our website or contact us on email: [email protected] 

Bari's interview (reference C900/01572) was recorded in 1999 by Neil Gander 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. The collection is copyright of the BBC.

This week's recording of the week was written by Dr. Maya Parmar, Research Fellow for Remaking Britain, Queen Mary University of London. 

Postcard of Pitcairn Island post office, dating to the 1940s. Public domain.

I’ve chosen this recording of the week to celebrate World Post day, which marks the anniversary of the creation of the Universal Postal Union. The Union was established to create and maintain a postal system for the free flow of mail around the world, enabling global communication by connecting faraway places.

There’s no better collection to illustrate that than the John Kenrick Ellis Collection. This consists of 11 open-reel message tapes sent from Pitcairn Island – a rugged and isolated volcanic outcrop in the southern Pacific Ocean, and one of the most remote civilian communities on the planet. The messages were recorded in the late 1950s by Roy Palmer Clark, the post-master of the island. His friend John Kenrick Ellis, residing in California, had sent him an open reel tape recorder so that they may record and post messages, and hear each other’s voices over the vast distance.

Roy Palmer Clark grew up in San Francisco, and travelled to Pitcairn Island in 1909 with his father. At the time of these recordings, the island had 142 inhabitants. The majority of this small community directly descends from a group of 18th-century settlers: nine British mutineers from the HMS Bounty and 17 Tahitian women and men (plus a baby girl) who in 1790 sought refuge in this isolated location.

Whilst his father later returned to America, Roy stayed to raise a family on the island. He served for a time as a teacher at the school, and a head elder in the church, eventually becoming the very first post-master in 1940. In October 1940 the very first Pitcairn Island stamps were issued, and in 1941 a small post office was established in main square of the island, Adamstown. In 1957 the post-master deemed it necessary to expand, and a new post office, which is still used today, was built in the early 1960s.

Many of the recordings in this collection describe living conditions on the island, and notable events - such as someone being injured by a falling mango, or a supposedly-shipwrecked man on a nearby uninhabited island. In amongst these news updates there are descriptions of what it’s like to run the postal service in such a remote and isolated location.

The only way mail to the island can be delivered and collected is via passing ships – to this day the island has no landing strip. In the 1950s, this was by passenger and cargo ships travelling from New Zealand to England, run by the New Zealand Shipping Company. The RMS Rangitiki, as mentioned in these reels, stopped off at Pitcairn Island for a 2 hour pit stop to break the monotony of the long crossing, also allowing islanders to trade goods and souvenirs with passengers.  In this clip Roy Palmer Clark recounts how poor weather affected the landing of the Rangitiki – you really get a sense of how important this event was to the isolated community.

Listen to Roy Palmer Clark describe the visit from RMS Rangitiki

Download Transcript of Roy Palmer Clark describing the visit from the RMS Rangitiki

RMS Rangitiki post-1957 refit. Public domain. 

The establishment of the postal service not only brought about a consistent route for post, but it also created an important revenue stream through the sale of stamps. This was the main impetus of the British government, who at that time wanted colonies to be self-sufficient. The organisation overseeing the manufacture and distribution of postage stamps to Pitcairn was known as the Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations. The British Library hold important proofs and artwork from this organisation in the Crown Agents Philatelic and Security Printing Archives.

This clip includes a description of a mistake in a stamp, which Roy presumed would be withdrawn and therefore more valuable!

Listen to Roy Palmer Clark talk about the error in the 4d stamp

Download Transcript of Roy Palmer Clark talking about the error in the 4d stamp

Proof of the Pitcairn Islands 1957-1963 Definitive Issue 4d stamp titled ‘Pitcairn School’, approved 28 September 1956.

Proof of the Pitcairn Islands 1957-1963 Definitive Issue 4d stamp titled ‘Pitcairn School House, ’approved 6 December 1957.

Proof of the Pitcairn Islands 1957-1963 Definitive Issue 4d stamp titled ‘Schoolteacher’s House,’ approved 28 January 1958.

The particular stamps he refers to in the recording are the type one and two 4d stamps of the Pitcairn Islands, 2 July 1957-1963 Definitive Issue. Designed and manufactured by Thomas De La Rue and Company using a recess printing process, these images from the Crown Agents Philatelic and Security Printing Archive Proof Boxes within the British Library’s Philatelic Collections reveal the confusion surrounding an accurate title for the stamp vignette.

The recording of Roy Palmer Clark is from August 1957 – it would take another few months before the proof was updated and then a few more until it was finally correct on the third attempt. What might seem like small editorial infelicities to some were very noteworthy events for the post-master. Stamps issued by Pitcairn Island were very popular for collectors, and profits from their sale supported the island’s regular costs – among them constructing a school and hiring a professional teacher from New Zealand. At one point sales of stamps accounted for a massive two thirds of the island’s entire revenue.

If you’d like to listen to more details of events on Pitcairn Island the full recording of the audio message, and the full collection are both available online.

More details about the Crown Agents Philatelic and Security Printing Archives can be sought from the Philatelic collection.

Today’s selection comes from Fiona Stubbings, Web Sounds Producer.

Today's selection comes from Emmeline Ledgerwood, Discovering Science website co-ordinator.

Sixty years ago, on 1 Oct 1963, the then Labour party leader, Harold Wilson, delivered his famous ‘white heat’ speech at the Labour party conference in Scarborough. In this speech he outlined the party’s plans to harness a ‘scientific revolution’ to modernise British industry and drive economic progress: “the Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.”

The speech’s rhetoric – linking planning, socialism and science – has been described as one that ‘caught the mood of the moment’ after 12 years of Conservative government. Many of the ideas that influenced the proposals put forward in this speech had been developed by left-wing scientists after the Second World War. The Labour party went on to win the next general election a year later in October 1964.

In this extract from the speech, Wilson articulates the country’s need for scientists and what was to be expected from them.

Listen to an extract from Harold Wilson’s speech at the 1963 Scarborough conference

Download transcript of an extract from Harold Wilson’s speech at the 1963 Scarborough conference

Wilson declared that “to train the scientists we are going to need will mean revolution in our attitude to education.” He emphasised the party’s commitment to comprehensive education and expanding access to higher education including the establishment of a ‘university of the air’ – the Open University came into being in 1969.

We are in familiar territory with Wilson’s presentation of science and scientists as being fundamental to improving the nation’s economic performance. Earlier this year the UK Government announced its own plans to channel scientific and technological expertise to grow the UK economy. Wilson also voiced concerns that resonate with current debates about the role of AI in society today: “If man is not going to assert his control over machines, the machines are going to assert their control over man.” Whether the year is 1963 or 2023, listening back this speech reminds us that society and politicians are continually balancing the promises and challenges of scientific advancement.

The full speech is available to listen to in the British Library Reading Rooms.

Further reading

David Horner, ‘The Road to Scarborough: Wilson, Labour and the Scientific Revolution’ in R. Coopey et al. (eds), The Wilson Governments 1964-1970 (Pinter Publishers, 1993), pp. 48–71.

David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History (Allen Lane, 2018).

Many yoga classes begin and end with the practice of chanting. Chanting aims to purify the mind by increasing both the mind and body’s attention. This in turn helps various people focus on the present, silencing the noise around them by releasing a smoothing feeling.

One of the benefits of chanting is full body relaxation, which is achieved by the repetition of mantras. I first became interested in chanting after attending several kirtan sessions in London. I discovered chanting as a meditative experience, a way to surrender from worries of daily life. Kirtan derives from a Sanskrit root, meaning call or recite; ultimately, it is the act of devotion to some divinity. I found the social aspect of chanting particularly healing, as the voice of many in unison can be a powerful instrument to connect people. The practice of chanting is integral to many religions, including Buddhism.

Listen to Nianfo chanting excerpt

This recording is part of the Miao Chueh Temple Collection, recorded in Taiwan in the late 1970s. The recording comes from a particular type of Buddhist school, Pure Land Buddhism, which originated in India around 2^nd century BCE.

Nianfo, to which the recording refers to, is the practice in Pure Land Buddhism consisting of the oral invocation of the Buddha Amitabha that will bring the reciter to the Land of Utmost Bliss. Through his invocation, the believer should reach a higher start of consciousness in the graded path towards becoming a liberated being. , the ultimate aim of any Buddhist tradition.

Mu yu is the wooden block used in Mahāyāna Buddhist practice during chanting. It is usually struck with a beater, and can be made in varying sizes. It is part of the baiqi ritual instrument group.

You can listen to the full recording on our Sounds webite. 

This week’s post was written by Giulia Baldorilli, Sound & Vision Reference Specialist.

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. 

In my spare time I have often pondered what would count as the ‘Seven Wonders of South London’. The Catford Cat and the Croydon IKEA towers no doubt, but the Crystal Palace transmitter and the Crystal Palace dinosaurs? And how do you separate the component parts of Greenwich?

For this blog I asked some friends and got a wide range of answers including (in alphabetical order): Borough Market, Camberwell Submarine, Cross Bones Graveyard, Crossness Pumping Station, Croydon Boxpark, Cutty Sark, Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens, Horniman Museum Walrus, London Eye, Mandela Way T-34 Tank, Millennium Dome, Nunhead Cemetery and the Richmond Park deer.

Regardless, in my own list I would make a case for Dawson's Heights in East Dulwich, designed by the architect Kate Macintosh. Dawson's Heights was built between 1968 and 1972, at the start of Macintosh's career but towards the end of the post-war boom in council house building. The estate sits atop a large hill and is visible from many directions; it’s for this reason that of the approximately 300 flats, two thirds were designed with views in both directions and all with views to the north. To do this Macintosh used a ziggurat scheme and, if nothing else, Dawson’s Heights must certainly have introduced many people to the word ziggurat.

Kate Macintosh was interviewed by Geraint Franklin in 2016 for the National Life Stories oral history project Architects' Lives. The interview is over 22 hours long and contains fascinating insights into her various works, including, of course, Dawson’s Heights. What I found particularly interesting was Macintosh’s description of how she deliberately based her designs for the estate on the ‘advantages’ and ‘specificities’ of the site, particularly the ‘stupendous views’. It’s this that led to her design winning out in an internal competition that had been arranged by Southwark Borough Architect and Planner, Frank Hayes.

Listen to Kate Macintosh

Download Kate Macintosh interview transcript

At later points in the interview Macintosh goes further into the inspirations for Dawson’s Heights, including Park Hill in Sheffield and Michael Young and Peter Willmott’s seminal sociological study, ‘Family and Kinship in East London’ – you can find oral histories with Michael Young by searching C1416/17 and C408/012 on our catalogue. Macintosh also describes how she built a model of the site to present at Hayes’ internal competition. Today you don’t need to do that yourself, Dawson’s Heights is so renowned that you can buy paper kits online and build your own miniature estate.

Kate Macintosh’s full life story interviewed can be listened to online at British Library sounds. The recording in the blog was edited from Part 9 of 17. The interview can be found in the Sound and Moving Image catalogue by searching C467/132 on our catalogue.

Today's selection comes from Charlie Morgan, Archivist, Oral History.