We are delighted to be announcing a major development for newspapers digitised from the British Library’s collection. From today, one million pages on the British Newspaper Archive site have become free to view, so not requiring any subscription payment. These one million pages will be followed by one million more each year for the next four years, creating a substantial free historical newspaper resource which should greatly expand the use of and understanding of historical newspapers.

Special 'golden' issue of The Sun, 28 June 1838, marking the coronation of Queen Victoria

This has been made possible through a new partnership agreement between the British Library and Findmypast, the family history company which manages the British Newspaper Archive. The BNA has over 44 million newspaper pages, mostly British and Irish titles, ranging from 1699 to 2009, or just under 10 per cent of all newspapers held by the British Library. The BNA is a subscription site, the payment made by users helping to digitise and preserve yet more newspapers.

The Colored News, 15 September 1855

It has long been the goal of the British Library to make some of its digitised newspapers freely available online, but we also want to see the BNA succeed as it has been doing, without which we could not have reached such a huge collection overall of digitised newspapers, nor the rate at which they are being produced (currently around half a million pages are being added to the BNA every month).

The ‘free to view’ solution keeps the successful model in place, while making a significant and varied selection of titles freely available to all, to view and to download, without charge. There are 158 titles on offer, ranging from 1720 to 1880. The latter date is significant. All of the newspapers that make up the ‘free to view’ offer are out-of-copyright. The British Library keeps to a ‘safe date’ when determining when a newspaper can be considered to be entirely out-of-copyright, which is 140 years after the date of publication.

The newspapers selected come from four British Library projects, plus some selected by Findmypast themselves.

• 19th Century Newspapers was a project funded by the Joint Information Systems. Committee over 2004-09, our first major newspaper digitisation programme
• Heritage Made Digital newspapers is an ongoing digitisation project focussing on newspapers in a poor or unfit condition
• Living with Machines is an ongoing research project, jointly led by the British Library and the Alan Turing Institute, which has been digitising selected UK regional newspapers as part of a major study of the British industrial age, using artificial intelligence tools to undertake new kinds of historical enquiry.
• The Endangered Archives Programme facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration

Barbados newspaper The Barbadian, 1 January 1827

So, what is on offer? The full list of titles is given below, but these are some of particular interest:

• The Barbadian (1822-1861) - covers the transition of Barbados from the colonial, pre-modern to the modern era, including the Emancipation (1834), and the end of the apprenticeship system (1838)
• The British Emancipator (1837-1840) - anti-slavery newspaper which fought for the abolition of the system of apprenticeship, which was put into place after slavery was abolished in the British Colonies
• British Miner and General Newsman (1862-1867) – journal devoted to working miners, which went through a number of titles including The Miner, The Workman’s Advocate and The Commonwealth
• Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register (1803-1836) – famous and hugely influential vehicle for the ideas and opinions of the great nineteenth-century radical William Cobbett
• The Examiner (1808-1880) – leading radical weekly, edited by Leigh Hunt, with contributors including William Hazlitt, John Keats and Percy Shelley
• Illustrated Sporting and Theatrical News (1862-1870) - lively newspaper covering a wide range of sports and theatrical events, with many fine illustrations
• The Jamaica Mercury and Kingston Weekly Advertiser (1779-1840) – West Indies newspaper notorious for its slavery advertisements, later known as The Royal Gazette of Jamaica
• The Lady’s Newspaper and Pictorial Times (1847-1863) - one of the earliest newspapers produced for an exclusively female audience
• Morning Herald (1800-1869) – founded on 1780, a national daily that for a number of years rivalled The Times in importance
• The Poor Man’s Guardian (1831-1835) - the most successful and influential of the radical unstamped (and thus illegal) newspapers of the early 1830s
• The Sun (1801-1871) – a daily evening national newspaper, founded in 1792, originally with pro-government and anti-French revolutionary stance, before changing to advocate liberal and free trade principles

There a few things to note about the free to view service. Users will still need to sign up with the British Newspaper Archive to be able to access them, though no charge will be made for their use. The fact that we consider newspapers made before 1881 to be in the public domain does not mean that we can make all pre-1881 digitised titles available for free – the BNA is dependent on subscriptions to maintain the considerable effort required to sustain it, and the one million pages per year arrangement is intended to protect that model.

We will be adding more free-to-view titles over the next four years at least, but we cannot say as yet what those titles will be. However, we are aware that the current list has a bias towards London/national titles and the north of London and will be rectifying the geographical imbalance in subsequent free-to-view releases.

Radical 'unstamped' newspaper The Poor Man's Guardian newspaper with its famous motto 'Knowledge is Power', from 23 July 1831

We hope that this is the start of a significant change in the study of British newspapers, and the study of so many topics as reported in those newspapers. Our list includes newspapers that are of established importance in understanding the nineteenth century, but also titles that currently do not feature as strongly as they might in research. Digitisation should not only make the familiar more readily available, but bring to new life the unfamiliar. There is so much to be discovered here, and much more to follow.

More information on discovering and using the 'free to view' titles is available on the British Newspaper Archive at https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/08/09/introducing-free-to-view-pages-on-the-british-newspaper-archive.

See also a blog post on the Alan Turing Institute's Living with Machines project: https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/sharing-the-benefits-free-to-view-newspapers-on-the-british-newspaper-archive/

People reading newspapers in the Crystal Palace Reading Room, London, from The Lady's Newspaper, 24 March 1855

List of titles

Below is a complete listing of all newspaper titles on the initial ‘free to view’ list of one million pages, including changes of title. Start and end dates are for what is being made freely available, not necessarily the complete run of the newspaper. For a few titles there are some missing issues for the dates given. A PDF copy of the list is available here:  Download Free to view British Library newspapers list 9 August 2021.

The Age (1825-1843)

Alston Herald, and East Cumberland Advertiser (1875-1879)

The Argus, or, Broad-sheet of the Empire (1839-1843)

The Atherstone Times (1879-1879), The Atherstone, Nuneaton, and Warwickshire Times (1879-1879)

Baldwin's London Weekly Journal (1803-1836)

The Barbadian (1822-1861)

Barbados Mercury (1783-1789), Barbados Mercury, and Bridge-town Gazette (1807-1848)

The Barrow Herald and Furness Advertiser (1863-1879)

The Beacon (Edinburgh) (1821-1821)

The Beacon (London) (1822-1822)

The Bee-Hive (1862-1870), The Penny Bee-Hive (1870-1870), The Bee-Hive (1870-1876), Industrial Review, Social and Political (1877-1878)

The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser (1878-1879)

The Blackpool Herald (1874-1879)

Blandford, Wimborne and Poole Telegram (1874-1879), The Blandford and Wimbourne Telegram (1879-1879)

Bridlington and Quay Gazette (1877-1877)

Bridport, Beaminster, and Lyme Regis Telegram and Dorset, Somerset, and Devon Advertiser (1865, 1877-1879)

Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette (1879-1879)

The Brighton Patriot, and Lewes Free Press (1835-1836), Brighton Patriot and South of England Free Press (1836-1839)

The British Emancipator (1837-1840)

The British Liberator (1833-1833)

The British Luminary; or, Weekly News and General Advertiser (1818-1818), The British Luminary and National Intelligencer (1818-1818), The British Luminary and Weekly Intelligence (1818-1820), The British Luminary, or Weekly Intelligencer (1820-1820), The Weekly Intelligencer, and British Luminary (1820-1821), The British Luminary and Weekly Intelligencer (1821-1823)

British Miner and General Newsman (1862-1863), The Miner (1863-1863), The Miner and Workman's Advocate (1863-1865), The Workman's Advocate (1865-1866), The Commonwealth (1866-1867)

The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser (1803-1826)

Caledonian Mercury (1720-1799), Caledonian Mercury (1800-1859), The Caledonian Mercury and Daily Express (1859-1860), The Caledonian Mercury (1860-1867)

The Cannock Chase Examiner (1874-1877)

The Central Glamorgan Gazette, and General, Commercial, and Agricultural Advertiser (1866-1879)

Champion (1836-1836), The Champion and Weekly Herald (1836-1840)

The Charter (1839-1840)

Chartist (1839-1839)

Chartist Circular (1839-1841)

Cleave's Weekly Police Gazette (1835-1836), Cleave's Weekly Police Gazette and Journal of News, Politics, and Literature (1836-1836)

Cobbett's Annual Register (1802-1804), Cobbett's Weekly Political Register (1804-1836)

Colored News (1855-1855)

Cradley Heath & Stourbridge Observer (1864-1864), The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle (1864-1866), The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle (1866-1879)

The Darlington & Stockton Telegraph, Richmond Herald, South Durham and North York Review (1870-1870), Darlington & Richmond Herald (1873-1874)

Denton, Haughton, & District Weekly News, The (1873-1874), Denton & Haughton Weekly News, and Audenshaw, Hooley Hill, and Dukinfield Advertiser (1874-1875), Denton Examiner, Audenshaw, Hooley Hill and Dukinfield Advertiser (1875-1878), Denton and Haughton Examiner (1878-1879)

The Dewsbury Chronicle, and West Riding Advertiser (1872-1875)

The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette (1858-1879)

The Examiner (1808-1880)

The Express (1846-1869)

The Forest of Dean Examiner (1875-1877)

The Glasgow Chronicle (1844-1857)

Glasgow Courier (1802, 1844-1866)

Illustrated Sporting News and Theatrical and Musical Review (Illustrated Sporting News, Theatrical Review (1862-1865), Illustrated Sporting and Theatrical News (1865-1870)

The Imperial Weekly Gazette (1808-1810), The Imperial Weekly Gazette and Westminster Journal (1818-1823), Imperial Gazette (1823-1825)

The Jamaica Mercury and Kingston Weekly Advertiser (1779-1780), The Royal Gazette (1780-1836), The Royal Gazette and Jamaica Times (1838-1840), The Royal Gazette of Jamaica (1840-1840)

Jewish Record (1868-1871)

The Kenilworth Advertiser (1872-1879)

The Lady's Newspaper and Pictorial Times (1847-1863)

The Lady's Own Paper (1866-1872)

The Lancaster Herald, and Town and County Advertiser (1831-1832)

The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser (1832-1854), Liverpool Standard and General Advertiser (1854-1855), Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser (1855-1856)

Liverpool Weekly Courier (1867-1879)

Lloyd's Companion to the "Penny Sunday Times and Peoples' Police Gazette" (1841-1847)

London Dispatch and People's Political and Social Reformer (1836-1839)

The Manchester Examiner (1848-1848)

Manchester Times (1828-1829), The Manchester Times and Gazette (1829-1848), Manchester Times and Manchester and Salford Advertiser and Chronicle (1848-1848)

The Midland Examiner and Times (1877-1877), The Midland Examiner and Wolverhampton Times (1877-1878)

Mirror of the Times (1800-1823)

The Morning Chronicle (1801-1865)

Morning Herald (1801-1869)

The National Register (1808-1823)

The New Weekly True Sun (1836-1836)

The News (1805-1835), The News and Sunday Herald (1835-1837), The News and Sunday Globe (1837-1839)

The Northern Daily Times (1853-1857), Northern Times (1857-1860), The Daily Times (1860-1861)

The Northern Liberator (1837-1840), The Northern Liberator and Champion (1840-1840)

Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser (1838-1844), The Northern Star and National Trades' Journal (1844-1852), The Star and National Trades' Journal (1852-1852), The Star of Freedom (1852-1852)

The Nuneaton Times (1878-1879)

The Odd Fellow (1839-1842)

The Operative (1838-1839)

Pictorial Times (1843-1848)

Pierce Egan's Life in London (1824-1827)

The Pontypridd District Herald and Rhondda Valley, Llantrisant, Caerphilly, and Mountain Ash News (1878-1879)

The Poole Telegram (1879-1879)

The Poor Man's Guardian (1831-1835)

The Potteries Examiner (1871-1879)

The Press (1853-1866)

Runcorn and Widnes Examiner (1870-1876), Runcorn Examiner (1877-1879)

The St. Helens Examiner, and Prescot Weekly News (1879-1879)

The Saint James's Chronicle (1801-1866)

Shropshire Examiner and all round the Wrekin Advertiser (1874-1877)

The South Staffordshire Examiner (1874-1874)

The Southern Star and London and Brighton Patriot (1840-1840)

Stalybridge Examiner, and Ashton, Dukinfield and Mossley Advertiser (1876-1876)

The Star (1801-1831)

The Statesman (1806-1824)

The Stockton Examiner, and South Durham and North Yorkshire Herald (1879-1879)

Stockton Gazette and Middlesbrough Times (1860-1865), Middlesbro' & Stockton Gazette and General Advertiser (1868-1868), The Middlesbrough Gazette and General Advertiser (1869-1869), Middlesbrough & Stockton Gazette and General Advertiser (1869-1876), The Weekly Gazette for Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool and Cleveland District (1876-1879)

Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser (1858-1879)

Stretford and Urmston Examiner (1879-1879)

The Sun (1801-1871)

Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press (1847-1879)

The Tamworth Miners' Examiner and Working Men's Journal (1873-1873), The Tamworth Examiner and Working Men's Journal (1873-1876)

The Warrington Examiner (1885-1878), The Warrington & Mid-Cheshire Examiner (1879-1879)

The Weekly Chronicle (1836-1851), The Weekly News and Chronicle (1851-1854), The Weekly Chronicle (1855-1855), The Weekly Chronicle and Register (1855-1864), The Weekly Chronicle and Register of Banking, Insurance, Railway and Mining Companies, Trade and Commerce (1864-1867)

Westminster Journal and Old British Spy (1805-1810)

The Weymouth, Portland and Dorchester Telegram (1862-1878)

Widnes Examiner (1876-1879)

Wolverhampton Times and Bilston, Willenhall, Wednesfield, and Sedgley Journal (1874-1875), The Wolverhampton and Midland Counties Advertiser (1875-1876)

We are very pleased to be able to announce that the British Library and family history website Findmypast have extended their partnership operation of the British Newspaper Archive.

British Newspaper Archive

The BNA was originally launched in 2011, with the aim of digitising newspapers from the British Library's collection, making these available  on the website, and delivering a digital preservation copy back to the British Library. An ambitious goal of 40 million pages was set for the ten-year arrangement, one which has now been reached.

The archive features four centuries of newspapers (currently 1699-2009), regional, national and international, digitised from both print and microfilm holdings. The advantage of the digital archive is not just the increase in access, but the long-term protection it guarantees for the fragile print newspapers themselves, as the handling of them becomes greatly reduced.

The BNA is aimed primarily at family history researchers, to whom it has been of huge benefit, but it has also attracted many academic researchers, becoming an essential reference source for almost any modern history topic. The regular flow of new content (currently around 400,000 pages are added to the site every month), makes the return visit essential, whatever your discipline. If the answer is not there today, it could well be tomorrow.

The extension of the partnership will mean a further fourteen million pages will be added to the BNA over the next three years. The BNA is a subscription site, but also promised is that one million pages to be made free-to-access each year. The launch date for this development can't be announced as yet, nor the titles that will feature, but they will all be out-of-copyright and therefore from the late nineteenth century and earlier. We are expecting this to have a major effect on how our digitised newspapers are used, and who uses them.

This free offer comes from plans being developed at the British Library to open up our news collections where we can. Complementing the free access to selected newspapers on the BNA will be open datasets on our Research Repository, presenting the digitised texts alone in a form that will benefit the new generation of researchers interested in 'big data', enabling them to seek new answers to old questions, and to tackle new questions that we had not been able to ask before now.

Much has changed in the world of newspaper research over the past ten years. There will all the more change in the next three years, as digitisation continues to have an immense impact on how we care for, present, and understand our historical news archives.

British Library press release: https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2021/may/british-library-and-findmypast-announce-renewal-of-long-term-partnership

Findmypast press release: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/british-library-renewal

As Joe Biden has now passed his first 100 days as the 46th President of the United States of America, it is time to reflect on the broadcasts of the US presidential election archived by the British Library. 2020 thrust upon us a global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the final months before the UK left the European Union, plus a Presidential election in America like no other. In 2016, the Library’s Broadcast News service archived the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President, continuing to collect broadcasts dealing with his presidency over the following four years. The 2020 US Presidential election was certain to be an interesting one, with an incumbent President with a background outside of politics versus a career politician who was a former Vice President.

CNN Final Presidential Debate, 23 October 2020

The run-up

The Democratic nomination debates were recorded for the Library’s Broadcast News service with extensive coverage by CNN and the debates covered by many of the world’s broadcasters in their news programmes.  All was going as expected … and then the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world.

This meant that Broadcast News was now being run from a curator’s spare bedroom, rather than from the British Library’s News, Radio and Moving Image area at our St Pancras site. The Coronavirus not only made adapting to new working conditions tricky for Broadcast News, but it also made politicians across the globe develop strategies and legislature to deal with a pandemic.

In the US, President Trump’s handling of the pandemic had attracted much news coverage throughout the year. His press briefings as part of the White House Task Force we captured from CNN coverage, albeit with the problem of no regularly scheduled time and sometimes patchy coverage. A trawl around other news organisations covered by Broadcast News resulted in finding fuller broadcasts of the briefings on Turkey’s TRT World, Sky News and the BBC. On many occasions CNN sometimes only broadcast the questions taken after the speeches were made, whereas TRT World and Russia’s RT would only show the speech itself. Plenty of documentaries were broadcast covering Donald Trump’s four years as President. These were also archived for Broadcast News, originating from stations across the world that that are licensed to broadcast in the UK.

This was all good preparation for the run up to the election itself. First there would be three Presidential debates. The initial one, on 29 September 2020, was a strange one, to put it mildly. CNN had full coverage, so their programming was duly archived. However, the combative manner of the debate, with Trump’s interruptions and responses in particular, triggered worldwide interest in how the debate was conducted. Breakfast news programming from Britain’s main news networks, the BBC, ITV, and Sky were recorded to show the post-debate analysis for each channel, to avoid bias. The major news programmes from China’s CGTN, RT, Al Jazeera, Japan’s NHK World, France 24 and TRT World, also gave their judgement, and that was also recorded.

Then the President caught COVID-19. His rallies had been noticeable for both himself, his aides and most of the crowds not wearing masks and not practicing social distancing. In contrast, his rival, Joe Biden, always wore a mask at his events and reporters and attendees were segregated. The Democratic Party’s convention was held virtually, compared to the Republican Party’s convention being held in large rallies. Both conventions’ highlights were recorded, and the key speeches were captured from live footage.

TV coverage criticized how the President was holding ‘super spreader’ events with his rallies, especially the gathering announcing the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court.

It was announced that the second presidential debate would be a virtual one, owing to the President’s diagnosis. Donald Trump rejected this idea, however, the two candidates instead taking part in separate ‘Town Hall’ events. It was impossible for CNN to show both Town Halls live, so highlights were broadcast and, again, the news broadcasts of the BBC, ITV, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CGTN and TRT World would also show clips and give their comments.

The final TV debate was held on 22 October. Both candidates attended, and this ended up as a stark contrast to the first one, resembling the civilized debate held prior to this in the debate between Vice President Mike Pence and the Democratic Party’s VP choice, Kamala Harris. Both were archived from CNN’s coverage and a balance of views was also obtained from coverage by the other news organizations.

A mixture of CNN’s coverage and that of TRT World, Sky and the BBC was captured to gain a flavour of the rallies then held in the run up to the election itself.

TRT World, America Decides, 3 November 2020

Election day

And then election day itself came. An election like no other, with all sorts of protestations that mail-in votes would lead to a fraudulent result, and a vicious second wave of the Coronavirus in America leading to many wanting to vote without attending the polling stations on the day.

The views of both President Trump and Joe Biden about voting were made clear in the run up to the election. Late night programmes from CNN were taken in addition to CNN Newsroom (which is recorded daily) to reflect the nature of voting intentions and the candidates’ views on this. CNN had many interviews with local officials in areas that had wildly different views on voting procedures, so this was an important set of programmes to archive in order to provide researchers into this election a chance to see how America was split on this issue. Most Trump supporters would turn up to vote on the day, many rejecting wearing a mask. Most Biden supporters suggested that they would largely vote by mail, also worried that voting on the day might bring intimidatory tactics from right-wing extremist supporters.

Early voting in some states also took place and scenes of day long queueing, and interviews given whilst waiting in line, were also recorded from CNN sources and other broadcasters.

It was decided to take all night coverage of election day itself from several stations to reflect balance in the views of the presenters. CNN, BBC, ITV, and Sky were chosen, and CGTN, Al Jazeera and TRT World were also recorded after polls closed giving their initial reactions to the results. However, there was no clear result and the election coverage continued over the next week.

It was decided to take all of CNN’s coverage throughout each day until a winner was declared. CNN had received good press reviews for their coverage (known on social media as ‘The Map Programme’), and this was complemented by coverage of key state declarations and updates from the BBC, Sky, ITV and Broadcast News’ overseas stations in Turkey, China, Japan, the Middle East, France, Nigeria and Russia. There were many documentaries about both President Trump and Joe Biden broadcast across many channels in the run up to, and during, the election. These were also archived.

Our broadcast archive of election day featured radio as well. The coverage from BBC Radio 4, BBC 5 Live, BBC World Service, LBC, TalkRADIO and Monocle 24 was all archived for our National Radio Archive pilot. This also included Siren Radio, a small community station set up in Lincoln University. They apologised for not having live coverage due to the station being closed due to the lockdown. Yet, they were able to record 20-minute interviews with professors in the US, political commentators in Washington and talk to American Studies students, who were watching the election. They returned to get their thoughts in the aftermath of the election one week on.

Bradford Community Broadcasting schedules the current affairs programme ‘Democracy Now!’ each day. This is a syndicated programme based in New York and has proved to be invaluable in covering the pandemic and the lead up to the election. Its coverage of voting and the aftermath of the election is helped by access to big names linked to social commentary and research, and the hour-long programme is a valuable resource into what life is like in America using first-hand accounts.

ITV News, 6 January 2021, with reporter Robert Moore at the Capitol

Aftermath

Finally, on November 7, Joe Biden was declared the winner. Again, TV coverage of the result was archived from the same sources. At this point the 24-hour coverage from CNN was halted and regular recordings of CNN Newsroom would report on the situation from then on.

Of course, that was not the end of the matter. President Trump issued lawsuits to recount or reject votes where he claimed that the voting had been illegal and refused to concede. His chief lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, held a bizarre press conference at the parking lot of the ‘Four Seasons Total Landscaping’ store in Philadelphia, a business located near a sex shop and a crematorium. Coverage of that was not covered live by CNN, but was by Sky News, with an amused Adam Boulton puzzling over the peculiar location.

With President Trump still refusing to accept his defeat, continually claiming that it was a fraudulent election, Georgia had its state runoff in early January. A run-off election was called because no candidate in the Senate election had enough votes to clear the state mandated percentage for a clear win. This meant that with two Senate seats at stake, and the US Senate majority for the Republican Party at risk, more campaigning by the two parties began again. All major rallies and speeches were again captured from CNN, TRT World, BBC, ITV and Sky. The election day itself was captured in full via CNN. With the lead changing hands throughout the night, it was a tense affair. Finally, both seats were won by the Democrats, meaning that they would now hold the majority in the Senate.

But this was not the end of the matter. One month later, America was rocked by an event that shook its democracy to its foundations. With the College Electoral Vote due to be ratified by Congress on the 6 January 2021, President Trump held a rally in Washington, where he and several key speakers once more condemned the validity of the election and its outcome and incited his followers to take action. The speech by President Trump and coverage of the rally was again archived from CNN broadcasts and other news outlets around the world.

What followed next was unprecedented in American history. A large group of Trump supporters forced their way into the Capitol building in Washington DC as the Senate was in session. CNN was covering the Electoral Vote session and this coverage continued as the rioters entered the building. The world’s news networks soon started following the events live. Broadcast News has the coverage of CNN, BBC News, Sky, TRT World and Al Jazeera. ITV’s coverage was particularly enlightening, as their reporter, Robert Moore was able to talk to the protesters as they entered the building and even within it. Euronews covered the event from their studio, but their coverage included up to the minute reaction on social media from world leaders and senior politicians. The subsequent Impeachment of President Trump for a second time was also captured by CNN and all major news stations also covered the session in the Senate in depth.

The Inauguration of the new president happened without the out-going President in attendance. His final message as President was recorded for the archives, and full coverage of the Inauguration of Joe Biden taken from the coverage of CNN, BBC, ITV, Sky, TRT World and Al Jazeera. Kamela Harris becoming the first woman to become Vice President, and the first black person to achieve that office, also allowed some of the stations to reflect on the historic aspect of the day. Amanda Gorman became the youngest poet to perform at a presidential inauguration, reading her poem, ‘The Hill We Climb’. The British Library has a direct connection with Amanda as she is a 2020 Eccles Fellow (one of the awards offered by the Eccles Centre for American Studies).

A huge amount of coverage of this historic chapter in American history is now archived as TV and radio coverage. With 2020 and 2021 being significant for a global pandemic, the US election could have been a sideshow. The material archived by Broadcast News and the National Radio Archive will show researchers in the future, just how extraordinary this moment in history was.

Neil McCowlen, Broadcast Recordings Curator

Broadcast News is available in all British Library reading rooms

We're delighted to be announcing with Edge Hill University  the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2021 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

A selection of short-lived British nineteenth-century newspaper titles

The theme is entitled Short-lived Newspapers: Reassessing Success and Failure in the 19th Century Press, and the studentship will focus on a significant but largely neglected part of nineteenth-century British newspaper history - the newspaper that did not last very long. History tends to be written by the winners, and newspaper history tends to focus on those newspaper that lasted for a good period of time and had a significant. This in tur influences decisions on what gets studied, digitised and made most readily available.

At times as much as half of British newspaper titles 1800-1900 lasted for less than five years, and they weren't all 'failures'. Some covered niche topics and were not intended to last long; some were part of a particular business strategy in which a publisher might produce several titles and see which one succeeded; some merged with other titles; some are just mysteries. Even when they were judged failures, that is interesting, because no newspaper ever set out  with the expectation of failing. The failures look so much like the successes, bar their duration. Whatever the reasons, this is a history ripe for investigation.

The project will have at its core around 200 newspaper titles that we have been digitising as part of the British  Library's Heritage Made Digital programme. It will be jointly supervised by Dr Bob Nicholson and Dr Andrew McInnes at Edge Hill University and by Dr Luke McKernan and Dr Elizabeth Gaskell at the British Library.  The student will spend time with both Edge Hill University and the British Library, where there will be the opportunity to gain a deep knowledge of the Library's newspaper collections, both their physical care and digitisation procedures.

Information on the project and an application form can be found on the Edge Hill University site. The deadline for applications is 1 June 2021 at 13:00.

The mass digitisation of historic newspapers has had a huge effect on many areas of research. Theories have been confirmed or overturned, new discoveries are made daily, evidence is available in abundance. One area in which digitised newspapers have had a marked effect is film studies. In this guest post, film and theatre historian Barry Anthony describes the use of newspapers by early film historians twenty years ago and how things have changed today.

Frame still from 1895 film known as Dancing Dog (National Fairground and Circus Archive)

In 2009 the National Fairground and Circus Archive received an exciting donation. The George Williams collection was a hoard of fragile nitrate films dating back to the last decade of the 19th century. Several had been made for Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope peepshow, a device that revealed 40 second motion pictures to individual customers about a year before the first projectors introduced the cinema experience to mass audiences. Some subjects had been shot at Edison’s New Jersey studio, but others were among the earliest known British films. Dating from 1895, they depicted actors dressed as a sailor and a policeman detaining a criminal; a moderately sized kangaroo sparring with a small boy; and an animal trainer presiding over a display of talented dancing dogs. They had been filmed with a camera developed by electrical engineer Robert Paul and photographic expert Birt Acres (the individual contribution made by each man remaining a source of some controversy). Given a dearth of information about this earliest period of British filmmaking it seemed unlikely that the participants in these productions, particularly the cavorting canines, would ever be identified.

Eight years later, in The Kinetoscope; a British History, the late Dr Richard Brown and myself told, for the first time, the story of the device’s exploitation in the UK. It was a detailed account which would not have been possible without the research possibilities made available by the British Newspaper Archive. Back in 1999 we had produced A Victorian Film Enterprise a thorough examination of the massively financed and highly prestigious British Mutoscope and Biograph Company. In the time before the digitisation of newspapers and other archival material, much of the research required for the book entailed numerous visits to newspaper archives. Countless hours were spent poring over the contents of dusty bound volumes or straining our eyes in front of flickering microfilm reader screens. It was a process analogous to mining, tunnelling onward through page after page in the hope of unearthing nuggets of relevant material.

Richard and I were both experienced researchers and had a few short cuts which we could employ. But this in itself was problematical. The book aimed to place British Biograph in a broad historical context, looking at the economic, social, and aesthetic aspects of its development and exploitation. In concentrating our searches on periodicals dedicated to entertainment (itself a massive task) we located much detail about the company but missed a wider and more diffuse range of comments in other publications. Our attempts to cope with these tangential areas were of necessity far more selective. A case in point concerned the company’s peepshow machine. Whilst Biograph films shown to audiences at music halls and other venues were usually impressive views of news events or foreign scenery, the Mutoscope viewer lived up to its ‘What the Butler Saw’ nickname by offering sexually titillating material. Across the country there were howls of indignation as hundreds of cast-iron mutoscopes were installed in arcades, railway stations, shops, and seaside promenades. Such scandalised protests were, of course, recorded by provincial newspapers with the details of offending subjects carefully noted. Faced with reports scattered across many local publications it became extremely difficult to locate sufficient material to be able to accurately assess the scope of public concern about an important feature of British Biograph’s exhibition policy. Had we possessed the online search facility later provided by BNA, merely entering the titles ‘Why Marie Blew Out the Light’ or ‘Should Ladies Wear Bloomers?’ would have provided a universal view of the controversy.

A mutoscope and a denunciation from the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 16 August 1899

To assemble a chronology of Biograph exhibitions outside London, we were fortunate that entertainment periodicals such as The Era, The Music Hall and Theatre Review, and The Stage usually listed the content of music-hall shows throughout the UK. It took weeks to search a six-year period, leaving us with an end result that was extensive, but not exhaustive. A similar chronology of exhibitions in The Kinetoscope was more complex because, unlike the Biograph projector, the device was not owned by a single company. Despite the involvement of many showmen often pursuing diverse exhibition practices, the Kinetoscope listing proved easier to assemble. The simple process of searching ‘Kinetoscope’ (and other spelling variants) on the BNA resulted in a virtually day-by-day record of exhibitions during the period 1894-1895. For the first time it was possible to establish that a large part of the population had its first exposure to motion pictures months before the introduction of projected films. Reviews and advertisements in local newspapers enabled several previously unknown exhibitors to be identified by name and their progress around the UK traced. Venues ranging from rowdy country fairs to genteel church bazaars were established; together with numbers of machines employed, durations of stay and prices charged. By following up on the further keywords revealed, it quickly became possible to present a rounded picture of a previously unrevealed (and largely unexpected) chapter of British entertainment history.

An analysis of the films mentioned in newspaper reports show that the overwhelming majority were American subjects issued by Edison. The limited number of films that were produced by Acres and Paul during their brief, bitter association (about 20 subjects) was reflected by very few references in the press. Some titles are known by a series of adverts that Paul (without crediting Acres) placed in The Era in April and May 1895 ‒ Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, Pickpocket Arrest, Railway Station Scene, Bootblack Scene and others described only as by ‘Sundry Performers’. Returning to the films donated to the National Fairground and Circus Archive, it was possible to recognise Pickpocket Arrest from the Era adverts. The lively contest between boy and marsupial could also be identified from another 1895 advert, The Boxing Kangaroo published in The English Mechanic (a periodical sadly not yet digitised by BNA). But those dancing dogs were elusive, with no references found in 1895 although the nature of the film clearly indicated that it was a product of the Acres/Paul association. The challenge of finding out more about the film took on a disproportionate importance, a test of our own research capabilities and the comprehensiveness of original sources. We examined accounts of various troupes of performing dogs (amazingly popular in the 1890s); looked at circuses appearing in the London area; and, of course, scrutinised the BNA for any possible clues. Eventually we hit our publication deadline and our search was abandoned.

Report from the Wharfdale and Airedale Observer for 10 January 1896, and a Kinetoscope

Following Richard’s death in 2020 I decided to resume the hunt. Altering the BNA search parameters very slightly, things suddenly became clear. In a description of a New Year Conversazione held at Saltaire in West Yorkshire, the Wharfdale and Airedale Observer for 10 January 1896 reported that ‘the Kinetoscopes give excellent illustrations of last year’s Derby race, a performance by Lorenzo’s skipping dogs (recently exhibited at the Royal Aquarium, London, where the photograph was taken), etc.’ A further search soon revealed that ‘Professor’ Lorenzo was a noted trainer whose troupe consisted of dogs, ‘Educated’ ponies, goats, and monkeys. One of his top turns was a boxing kangaroo who fought against a boy billed as ‘Young England’. It was an inconsequential discovery, but one which demonstrated the scope and potential of the BNA. We had gone from building a detailed, multi-layered picture of the earliest years of moving pictures to revealing a single music-hall act that had played a minor part in their development. Identifying an entertainment industry in the making or a group of dancing (or skipping) dogs – all had become one.

Barry Anthony

 

Barry Anthony is the co-author (with Richard Brown) of A Victorian Film Enterprise: The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1897-1915 (1999) and The Kinetoscope: A British History (2017). His other works include The King's Jester: The Life of Dan Leno, Victorian Comic Genius (2010); Chaplin's Music Hall: The Chaplins and their Circle in the Limelight (2012) and Murder, Mayhem and Music Hall: The Dark Side of Victorian London (2015). There is information on the George Williams Collection at the National Fairground and Circus Archive at https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nfca/collections/georgewilliams.

We are delighted to announce an invitation for academics at UK universities and Higher Education Institutions to collaborate with the British Library on jointly supervised PhD studentships funded through the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships scheme. The Library is seeking proposals for two PhD projects, to start in October 2021, one of which will be based on our nineteenth-century newspaper collections.

The Royal York newspaper ran for nineteen issues May-September 1827

While digitising poor condition London-based nineteenth-century newspapers  for the Heritage Made Digital Newspapers project, we became intrigued by the large number of relatively short-lived newspaper titles that fitted within our digitisation criteria, of which so little was known. Newspaper history, and consequently digitisation policy, tends towards the more successful titles that had longer runs. There is much logic to this, but what are we leaving out if we overlook 'failures', and are they really 'failures' at all? There was an opportunity for some fresh thinking about our newspaper heritage.

Entitled Short-lived Newspapers: Reassessing Success and Failure in the 19th Century Press, the CDP will concentrate on newspapers that lasted less than five years, chiefly those held by the British Library (we have digitised some 200 short-run titles as part of Heritage Made Digital). While the proportion of British nineteenth-century newspapers that lasted five years or less varied over time, it was always a significant percentage, often comprising more than half of the news publications in circulation. 

The project is concerned with exploring and questioning preconceived ideas of success and failure in the 19th century press. It should investigate whether longevity is a useful metric for measuring the success of a newspaper, and what factors impacted how long a newspaper lasted for. It should also look at large-scale data to explore patterns of ‘success’ or ‘failure’, and map these against wider political, social and technological patterns of the period.

Research areas that could be explored to analyse why some publications thrived and others did not may include, for example, taxation and censorship (particularly the implications of the Six Acts (1819), and the ‘Taxes on Knowledge’); technology and innovation, examining the impact of railways, telegraph technology, and/or new printing technologies; the shifting fashions of reading and journalism, education and literacy; working/leisure patterns or influences originating from outside the United Kingdom.

19th century newspapers lend themselves to research in the fields of newspaper history/periodicals study; cultural, political or economic history; literature; and digital humanities. The research could incorporate a range of research methods such as bibliographic research, aspects of data science, close and distant reading, and audience studies.

Academics at UK universities and Higher Education Institutions interested in this call should download information on the research theme and the application forms here: www.bl.uk/news/2020/november/cdp-call-for-hei-partners-2020.

The application deadline is 5 pm on Friday 18 December 2020.

Announced as it was in the middle of March of this year, it is possible that not all may have read of the British Library's ambitions to extend its operations in some form through a new public space in Leeds. The government has made a £25 million commitment, as part of the West Yorkshire Devolution deal, to establish a British Library North in Leeds City Centre. Exploratory discussions are underway between Leeds City Council and the British Library and property developer CEG about the Grade 1 listed Temple Works site over the potential for its occupancy by the British Library. 

From a Tiziana Alocci infographic on the Crimean War

As part of this process, we have been working with various Leeds organisations and group to explore shared interests through a programme of public events. One of these, the Leeds Digital Festival, takes place 21 September-2 October, and features two events (among 294) that feature the British Library news collections. As we digitise more and more of our news collections, and as research applications of a digital news library continue to develop and challenge us, we are pleased to be able to showcase two particularly interesting events that emphasise creativity and new thinking.

AI and the Headline Archive (24 September, 12:00-13:00 - tickets still available)

As part of the Heritage Made Digital newspapers project, where we are digitising poor condition out-of-copyright newspapers, we are keen to share in imaginative ways of extracting and re-using the data. For this events we have been working with artists Tom Schofield, Sam Skinner and Nathan Jones from Torque Editions, who are using artificial intelligence and speed reading technology to explore aspects of our nineteenth-century newspaper collections, focussing on headlines and story titles. This event will discuss how new discoveries can be made about human-computer reading capacity and media flows by applying artistic and ‘hacker’ techniques to historical data.

Creating Captivating Data Visualisations (29 September 13:00-16:00 - sold out)

In May 2021 the British Library will be hosting a small exhibition on infographics on nineteenth-century themes, created out of newspaper data and other datasets. We have worked with three designers on this projectors, one of whom, the award-winning information designer Tiziana Alocci with host this workshops, together with the British Library's Lead Curator, News, Luke McKernan, Alocci will lead attendees through a hands on, practical workshop in the creative process behind effective data visualisation, exploring best practices in the industry and how to make such work stand out. This project reflects our great interest in showing how historical news resources can be illuminated through current  news applications, and in demonstrating creative applications of news data.

The Leeds development is one part of still larger plans to transform the British Library's existing site in the north of England, at Boston Spa in Yorkshire. Thanks to the Chancellor’s commitment, announced in the March budget, to invest up to £95 million, we will be able to renew and develop our Boston Spa site for the 21st century, securing its ability to store and make available our ever-growing national collection for generations to come. It is at Boston Spa that the majority of the nation's newspaper collection is held, in the National Newspaper Building. 

Creating Captivating Data Visualisations has sold out already, but tickets are still available for AI and the Headline Archive, which is a free event. Do join us if you can, as we explore how today's technologies can make yesterday's news speak to us in new and exciting ways.

 

This is a guest post from Helena Byrne, Web Archivist at the British Library and a member of  The Football Collective,  a dedicated network of people who wish to bring critical debate to football.

The Irish Ladies XI, The Northern Whig and Belfast Post, 5 August 1932, via British Newspaper Archive

This is a call for all football historians that may have come across references to Irish women’s football of any code prior to and including 1973. When this project first started in January 2019 it was commonly believed that women’s football governing bodies were established in Ireland from 1973 onwards. However, as there is little known about the history and development of women’s football in Ireland it was only recently established in academic spheres that the first women’s football governing body was the Northern Irish Ladies Football Association (NILFA). The NILFA was recognised by the Women’s Football Association (WFA) in December 1972 just a few months before the Ladies Football Association of Ireland (LFA) in 1973 (possibly February) (WFA Archive, British Library MS 89306/1/3).

Although some involved in organising women’s football were aware that the NILFA, which a short time later switched out ladies for women, were established in 1972 the Irish Football Association (IFA) have their founding date as 26 November 1976. This is not surprising as the voluntary nature of women’s football would have meant that many of the original founding members may have only been around for a few years. In addition, there could have been a break in play due to The Troubles as 1972 was one of the bloodiest years on record. 

This project is calling on the crowd to share any newspaper references they may have come across prior to and including 1973.

France v Irish eleven at Grosvenor Park, Belfast, Belfast News-Letter, 12 August 1936, via British Newspaper Archive

How to get involved

You can nominate the newspaper references you have here:

https://goo.gl/forms/OQRHkVCQD3hSosZ32

Originally the nomination form was due to run for six months, then this was extended for a further six months.  However, the project has gathered over two hundred nominations so far and there are many more independent researchers and academics uncovering news clippings about Irish women’s football, that it was felt that the collection period should stay open until further notice.

How the data will be shared

Each newspaper reference will be marked on the map with the details supplied by the nominator and will include the name of the person(s) who nominated that reference. The raw data of nominations up until June 2019 can be viewed here.

After online form closes the data will be cleaned up and deposited with News collections at the British Library. The data will be published as an open source data set that can be accessed by anyone interested in women’s football history.

What to nominate

We are interested in any references to women’s football or female involvement in men’s football on the island of Ireland from any newspaper even if it was published outside Ireland. This includes women attending football matches, being involved in the running of a team as well as playing any code of football such as soccer or Gaelic etc.

Aim

It is hoped that this project will start a conversation amongst researchers interested in Irish sports to do more to document the history and development of women’s football. Women’s football of any code only started to become popular in Ireland from the mid 1960’s onwards, but very little is known of what went before. By collaborating through this public form, we can start to piece together the knowledge that exists within the research community and identify where the gaps in our knowledge lie.

Helena Byrne

A version of this post was first published on the Football Collective website

We are publishing a series of posts on favourite books about newspapers. We have asked members of the British Library's news collection team and some outside experts each to name three books about newspapers that they treasure and would recommend to others. The books can be wholly or partly about newspapers, they can be fact or fiction, they can be familiar or unfamiliar. No book can be picked twice, and no one taking part can choose one of their own books.

We hope readers will enjoy the series and seek out some of the recommendations. The choices below have been made by Dr Stephen Tate, Blackburn College University Centre.

My Life’s Pilgrimage, Thomas Catling. London. John Murray, 1911.

The recollections of Thomas Catling provide a welcome insight regarding the practicalities of nineteenth-century newspaper journalism. Catling spent most of his working life on Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper in London, rising from compositor to editor. He joined the Sunday newspaper in 1854 and retired in 1906. It is a book with a rich seam of enlightening anecdote and opinion.

All three books in my selection are memoirs of newspaper journalists. They would not have been published had the authors not tasted success. But all three experienced work at the humdrum level of journalism before talent and luck saw their careers advance. In my endeavour to rescue the world of the workaday reporter from a surprising neglect in contemporary press historiography, books like Catling’s have opened up avenues of research and moments of understanding.

The author touches upon the pounds, shillings and pence of his trade; the career path from composing case to the editorial room; the role of the sub-editor; the interaction of the press with the worlds of theatre, fiction-writing, the law and politics; the mechanics of production; the practicalities of reporting crime; edition structures. The narrative is piecemeal, discursive, meandering . . . but there are dates, names, events and situations. What a feast!

Memoirs of Robert Patrick Watson: A Journalist’s Experience of Mixed Society, Robert P Watson. London. Smith, Ainslie and Co, 1899.

For a historian researching the trade of the sporting journalist, the above title offers few clues as to its worth. But its 500 pages are packed with detail outlining the at times rambunctious, disorderly world of sport in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Watson was born in 1848 and the book covers his reporting assignments for Sporting Life, Bell’s Life in London, Sportsman and Sunday Referee, covering pugilism, pedestrianism, water sports, wrestling, cycling, billiards, endurance feats and much else besides. His dalliance with sports periodical proprietorship is also covered.

Watson worked at a time when the reporter was often called upon to act as referee and stake-money holder in prize contests and he foregrounds his role as event judge and occasional organiser, nowhere hinting at any pride in writing style or journalistic prestige. For the author and his paymasters the role of reporter is subsidiary. It is an unwitting testimony to the uncertain status of the sports reporter before the adoption by the cheap popular press of codified team games as part of its editorial agenda.

The Macadam Road, John Macadam. London. Sportsmans Book Club, 1957 (originally published London. Jarrolds, 1955.)

This is a fragmented, anecdotal stroll through the author’s career as Greenock shipyard apprentice, provincial newspaper telephone boy, drama critic, sub-editor and, eventually, leading Fleet Street sports reporter. Its leitmotif is perhaps best summed up in a sense of drift through the 1920s to the 1950s and that drift captures, I think, the essence of the stories of many journalists’ working lives.

Macadam suggests his book, and thereby his career, ‘. . . goes nowhere in particular from nowhere very important’, with ‘. . . accidents and divergencies along that road’. But (despite a concluding element of whimsy) it provides a valuable understanding of how some careers take shape, together with the pinched circumstances of weekly paper existence, the happenstance of job moves and the excitement and pressure associated with the quest for sports story exclusives to fuel the national newspaper juggernaut. He describes the ‘harrowing experience’ of being among the press pack on an England football international tour, the newsmen ‘. . . watching each other like cats for fear of the unconsidered trifles of news that might have escaped their own eyes’.

Steve Tate

We are publishing a series of posts on favourite books about newspapers. We have asked members of the British Library's news collection team and some outside experts each to name three books about newspapers that they treasure and would recommend to others. The books can be wholly or partly about newspapers, they can be fact or fiction, they can be familiar or unfamiliar. No book can be picked twice, and no one taking part can choose one of their own books.

We hope readers will enjoy the series and seek out some of the recommendations. The choices below have been made by Dr. Paul Gooding, Lecturer in Information Studies, University of Glasgow.

 

Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain, James Curran and Jean Seaton, London: Routledge 2018 (8^th edition)

This book borrows its title from a scathing attack on the press barons Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere, by then leader of the opposition Stanley Baldwin in 1931. I think it’s fair to say that these polemical undertones permeate a book that serves two valuable purposes. First, it provides a wide-ranging history of the press and broadcasting in Britain from around 1800 to the present day. Second, it provides a series of proposals for the reform of the contemporary institutions of the press. The value of these complementary parts is underlined by the fact that the book is now in its eighth edition and translated into several languages.

That said, the part that still chimes with me is the way that Curran and Seaton force us to reconsider not just the institutions of the press since the digital turn, but our own thinking around the underlying technologies. Vincent Mosco described technologies as entering a state of “powerful banality” – here, the authors describe the awe-struck state that is expressed by our continuing capitalisation of the Internet, and the impact that this wonderment has upon our ability to effectively critique its related institutions and technologies.

 

Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print, Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland, Farnham: Ashgate 2009.

Deegan and Sutherland write at length about the pasts, present and future of historical newspapers, but in reality the scope of the book is much broader. It explores the forms and institutions of print, and it spans newspapers, books, publishers and libraries. Each of these is considered through the lens of large-scale digitisation of library collections, allowing the authors to explore how digital remediation redefines our interaction with the diverse forms of print.

What really stood out for me is that this is a book written by, and for, scholars and practitioners of information, and the links it draws between the material history of forms such as historical newspapers and the curatorial decision involved in contemporary digitisation practice. It recognises the way that digitisation recovers the textual legacy of materials such as historical newspapers, while also providing an account of the ways in which the resultant digital facsimiles reformulate those texts. In short; come for the chapters on the nineteenth century press, stay for the interventions into digitisation theory and practice.

 

The Truth, Terry Pratchett, London: Doubleday, 2000

I’m generally of the view that most lists of book recommendations can be improved with a liberal dose of Terry Pratchett, and the world of newspapers is no different. The Truth tells the story of William de Worde, a professional scribe and exiled son of nobility, who inadvertently creates and becomes the editor of the Ankh Morpork Times, the first newspaper in the Discworld’s history. It’s a tale of investigative journalism in the highest echelons of society, of the challenges of speaking truth to power, and of a vampire photographer who turns to dust whenever he uses the flash.

Pratchett’s books became increasingly satirical throughout his career, using fantasy to shine a light on the social and political hierarchies of our world. The Truth explores the challenges posed by those who try to hold the powerful to account, in the face of a printing press characterised as a beast that is constantly, terrifyingly hungry for words. Pratchett’s understanding of the human condition means that so much of his writing remains relevant: right now, as we process the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our lives, the misspelt motto of the Ankh Morpork Times is particularly pertinent: “The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret.”

Paul Gooding