Oral History - guide to resources: 1950-1959 (A-M)

Ambleside Oral History Group has been conducting oral history interviews since 1976 on a broad range of subjects relating to life in Ambleside and the Lake District area. They maintain an expanding archive, currently numbering over 450 interviews. The interview transcripts for the entire archive are available online and are fully searchable by keyword, or browsable by topic. Access to the online transcripts and search facility must be requested using the registration page on the website. The audio recordings themselves are not available online and only accessible by prior appointment at Ambleside Public Library.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; childhood; community; education; leisure; WWI; WWII

Previously known as the ACTT History Project and the BECTU History Project, the British Entertainment History Project has for over 35 years been creating what is now the UK's largest oral history collection of interviews with professionals from across the film, television, radio and theatre industries. Many of the over 800 interviews conducted have been digitised and transcribed and are available on the website. Listening copies of all can be accessed at the BFI National Library in London.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Work

Keywords: engineering; film; theatre; broadcasting; television

This qualitative project sought to provide an analysis of the 'brain drain' debate of the 1950s and 1960s as a social phenomenon in the context of concerns the United Kingdom was losing skilled scientific and engineering personnel to other countries. The dataset, which can be accessed via the UK Data Service, comprises of 19 oral history interviews with scientists and engineers who emigrated to the United States or Canada in the 1950s or 1960s as well as British policymakers involved in any way in the 'brain drain' debate at this time.

Topics: Education, Politics & Government, Science & Medicine

Keywords: brain drain, emigration, policy

Interviews conducted from 1985 with those involved in British polar science, particularly Operation Tabarin, 1943–45, Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), 1945–61, and British Antarctic Survey (BAS), 1962–present. This webpage links to several others where the project's results (interview lists, recordings, transcripts, etc.) can be accessed.

Topics: Science & Medicine; Work

Keywords: exploration; science

This programme was established in 1995 to record the memories of former British diplomats or other officials who played a significant role in international relations. Through these oral histories, which are conserved at the Churchill Archives Centre (Churchill College, Cambridge), the Programme aims to go behind the official documents to explore how diplomats experienced significant events as well as providing valuable insights into the daily workings of diplomacy. The transcripts of the BDOHP interviews can be broadly searched by subject, country and historical event. You can also try a more advanced search by using the indexed catalogue to the transcripts on ArchiveSearch (which contains information on most of the archives and manuscripts held in Cambridge), or do free text searching within all the transcripts themselves on Churchill Archives Centre's Access Portal.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: diplomacy; foreign policy; government; international relations

This research project was established by the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies in 2000 to record the experience of Hindus who migrated to Britain. The oral history interviews focussed on both the interviewee’s personal history and on his or her religious practices and beliefs. Interviews were conducted with members of Hindu communities from across Britain. The Final Report is available online. The complete archive of over 300 interviews is accessible at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; migration; race; religion

[This resource is currently unavailable as an ongoing consequence of the 2023 cyberattack targeting the British Library. Currently the only way to access sound files from the British Library collection is by making an appointment to visit the Reading Rooms in St Pancras. Please refer to the interim Sound & Moving Image Catalogue ]

The British Library has an extensive collections of sound recordings, including oral history resources on a wide range of subjects.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

Calum Iain Maclean was a Scottish folklorist, collector, ethnographer and author. The Calum Maclean Collection Online Catalogue provides access in digital format to over 13,000 manuscript pages of transcriptions of mainly Scottish Gaelic folklore (primarily folktales as well as other materials) from his fieldwork. Its database is password protected and researchers must apply directly through the site for access. Maclean’s entire collections are held between the National Folklore Archive, University College Dublin and the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: ethnology; folktales; Gaelic; songs; stories

Epping Forest District Museum conducted a series of oral history interviews about everyday life and work in the district. The collection also includes memories of historic events, such as the Second World War. Four audio clips on the themes of farming, housing, industry and transport are available online. The entire collection is accessible by appointment at the Museum.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; childhood; housing; industry; WWII

This website provides online access to selected audio recordings of the Cork Folklore Project. Interview extracts can be accessed through an interactive map of the Cork area or are searchable by topic.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; death; games; music; sport

The Corner Shop was a social history project to document Black Country shops from 1950-2010. Community volunteers were given training and asked to interview corner shop-owners, their families, and their customers. 31 interviews were recorded in total.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: community; family

This project aimed to explore changing financial management practices in working class homes within the city of Belfast. A series of oral history interviews recorded individual experiences of credit, debt and money management. The interviews adopted a life history approach, which enables the gender, generation, neighbourhood, occupation, income and religion of individual respondents to be considered alongside their personal and familial experiences of financial decision-making. The transcripts of 26 interviews, including two with licensed money lenders, are available online through the UK Data Service. Researchers must first sign into the UK Data Service using their institutional login and state their intended use of any material accessed.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; family; finance; gender; religion

Was at http://www.diabetes-stories.com/index.asp
This project conducted 100 oral history interviews with individuals with diabetes, members of their families, and healthcare professionals. The interviews record experiences of life with diabetes dating back to the 1920s, including information on changing treatments and the impact of diabetes on individual life history and identity. This resource provides online access to unedited audio recordings, short audio extracts, written summaries and full transcripts. The interviews are either browsable by section (People with Diabetes; Family Members; Healthcare Professionals) and within this by decade and topic, or are searchable by keyword, phrase or subject.

Topics: Science & Medicine

Keywords: family; healthcare; medicine

A collection of audio examples of dialect speech in the Welsh language, together with distribution maps of some dialect features. The recordings come from the archives of St Fagans: National History Museum and the Department of Welsh, Cardiff University, two institutions which have been collecting and recording oral testimonies since the 1950s.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: language; Welsh

This archive holds the audio and transcript collections for three oral history projects conducted by Elizabeth Roberts and Lucinda McCray Beier during the 1970s and 1980s on the social and family life of Barrow, Lancaster and Preston from 1890 to 1970. In total, the Archive contains the oral testimony of over 260 respondents.The original reel-to-reel tapes are now held in the sound collections of Lancashire Archives. This website hosts the transcripts of interviews and can be searched in multiple ways.

Topics: People

Keywords: community, death; family

An oral history archive capturing pivotal moments in Exmoor's history, including the two World Wars, the formation of the Exmoor National Park Authority and the 1952 Lynmouth flood disaster. Topics covered range widely from agriculture and engineering to whortleberry picking, peace protests, washday and hunting. It features over 200 hours of recording of 78 interviewees, giving a unique insight into life on Exmoor during the 20th century. This website has a nearly complete set of the interviews made for the project, together with the photographs taken by Mark Rattenbury. The full recordings may be listened to at Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton, the Devon Heritage Centre in Exeter and the North Devon Record Office in Barnstaple.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; childhood; community; education

Also known as ‘100 families’, this project examined the connections between family life and social mobility by means of in-depth life story interviews, where possible with different generations of the same family. The collection consists of 170 complete interview transcripts averaging 54 pages in length from interviews conducted during the mid-1980s. The transcripts have been anonymised and fully digitised, and are accessible on the UK Data Service. In order to download the interviews it is first necessary to sign into the Service, using your institutional login, and state your intended use of any data accessed.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: childhood; education; family; leisure, politics

Foundling Voices, established in 2008, has recorded 74 life story interviews with individuals who grew up in the care of the Foundling Hospital during the first half of the twentieth century. The project website provides access to audio extracts from the interviews. London Metropolitan archives hold the complete audio recordings and transcripts of the interviews.

Topics: Education; People

Keywords: childhood; education; family; school

This project, based at the Institute of Historical Research from 2009-2011, aimed to create a ‘history of school history’ from 1900 to the present day. The project explored both curriculum changes and their impact at ground level in English state schools. At the centre of the project was a series of 68 oral history interviews conducted with former secretaries of state, school inspectors, teacher trainers, former members of the History Working Group which devised the first National Curriculum, textbook writers, teachers and pupils. Some of the interviews were conducted in pairs or groups and the total number of interviewees was 80. The complete recorded interviews and associated transcripts are available to search and download from the website, along with other data collected in the course of the project.

Topics: Education

Keywords: government

The History of Parliament's Oral History project aims to create a record of people involved in post-Second World War British politics at both the national and constituency level. The project began in November 2011 and is ongoing. The recordings are currently only available to listen to onsite at the British Library, St Pancras. Detailed summary descriptions of deposited interviews are accessible online from the British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue. To access the relevant records enter the search term 'The History of Parliament Oral History Project’.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: government; politics

British Library Sound has made available online the complete audio recordings of 34 interviews conducted from 1994 to 1997 by Dr David Tyrrell with those who worked at the Common Cold Unit in Salisbury from 1957 to 1990. They are accessible to all Higher and Further Education institutions.

Topics: Science & Medicine; Work

Keywords: medicine; science

This oral history project established in 2006 recorded the stories and experiences of people from all over the world who came to settle in Reading. 22 interview transcripts are available to read online and extracts from the interviews can also be searched by selected themes, including Childhood, Children’s Identity, Community, Economic Situation, Education & Training, Family Values, Food, Jobs, Old Reading, Political Situation, Racism, Self Sufficiency, and Where Home Is.

Topics: People

Keywords: childhood; community; education; family; migration; race; refugees; work

[no longer freely available.] In the First Person is an in-depth index of thousands of collections of English language personal narratives from around the world. Along with diary entries and letters, the index contains approximately 17,00 entries for oral history. The index is searchable by keyword.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

This project, which resulted in a book publication, sought to explore the memories of the Jewish population in Leicester during the 1940s and 1950s. Six short audio extracts from interviews recorded at the project book launch are available to listen to online. It is also possible to download chapters of the book from the website.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; Jews

This project sought to produce a lasting record of the historic jobbing system, which first developed during the nineteenth-century and came to an end with the ‘Big Bang’ of October 1986. Firms of jobbers left few, if any, records of their affairs. The Centre for Metropolitan History has thus compiled an archive of 32 interviews with former jobbers, and a smaller number with brokers and financial journalists so as to provide a different perspective on the jobbing system. Summaries of all 42 interviews, and full transcripts and audio recordings for 32 interviews are available online. The ten interviews not available online may be consulted, by arrangement, at the Centre for Metropolitan History.

Topics: Work

Keywords: business history; finance

Between 2004 and 2008, King’s Cross Voices captured the memories and experiences of a large variety of men and women who lived, worked and studied in King’s Cross before its physical landscape and communities became transformed by the redevelopment of the area. Oral history interviews were collected with those who worked in the railway industry, as well as with students, teachers, shopkeepers, market traders, police officers, artists, office workers, campaigners, squatters, politicians, prostitutes, factory workers, builders and many more. Written extracts from nine of the interviews are available to read online, as is an audio sound trail of Argyle Square in the King’s Cross area, which includes audio extracts from the original interviews. The recordings and transcripts are archived at Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre and are available to access in full on public computers in all Camden Libraries.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: community

In 2007 Kiveton Park and Wales History Society interviewed residents about their lives and experiences in the area. Audio extracts from 12 interviews are available to listen to online. Many of these relate to coal mining.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: childhood; education; football; mining; industry; sport; union; WWII

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Korean War, the Imperial War Museum created this site which includes 8 short audio extracts from interviews with Korean War veterans. The Sound Archive has been interviewing Korean War veterans since 1990 and the full audio interviews are available to listen to at the Imperial War Museum, London.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: military history

This project conducted oral history interviews with people from Suffolk who had either taken part in the Olympic or Paralympic Games since 1948 or were then preparing to compete in London 2012. Short films, audio recordings and transcripts of 21 interviews are available to access through the website.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Keywords: sport

The Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture holds a large number of recordings relating to dialect and folk life dating back to the 1950s. There are recordings related to most English counties, as well as Scotland, Wales and Ireland. They cover a wide variety of subjects, including community, society, economics, industrial relations, politics, history, customs and beliefs, traditional medicine, traditional narratives, children's traditions, traditional music, song, dance and drama, as well as traditional crafts, work techniques and material culture. 16 audio extracts from the archives are available to listen to online. The online selection aims to be representative of the range of holdings available at the archive in Leeds.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: community; craft; dance; language; music; politics; songs

The Listening Project is an ongoing project run in partnership by the BBC and the British Library. The project has requested people from across the country to submit an audio recording of a short, meaningful conversation held between two individuals. The recordings are being broadcast across BBC radio and archived by the British Library. A significant number, currently over 300, are also available to listen to through the BBC Radio 4 website. The conversations cover a wide range of topics including education, family, health, religion and war.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Education; People; War & Culture; Work

Keywords: education; family; healthcare; religion; sexuality; sport

This database of the digitised Mass Observation archive is available to University members. As well as providing online access to top level file reports produced by Mass Observation from 1937 to 1972, this resource also provides access to the raw data used to produce them for a series of topic collections, including Juvenile Delinquency; Korea, 1950; and Radio Listening, 1939-1948. This raw material consists of interviews as well as questionnaires, observations and ephemera. To access this resource from outside the Oxford University network, follow the link through SOLO.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: cinema; family; music; politics; radio; television

This website provides access to a number of videos created as part of a project to record stories of migration into the East Midlands from the UK and further afield since 1945. The project, which was managed by the East Midlands Oral History Archive, trained a number of local groups to conduct and edit the oral history interviews into a number of short videos about their communities. The videos can be accessed by clicking on an interactive map of the East Midlands area on the website homepage. It is worth noting that this map does not seem to load correctly when using Firefox web browser but works fine when using Internet Explorer.

Topics: People

Keywords: migration; refugees

The Millenium Memory Bank (MMB) represents one of the largest single oral history collections in Europe. From 1998 to 1999, BBC local radio stations interviewed a total of 640 individuals from around the UK about their local, everyday experiences. These formed the basis for a series of radio programmes entitled The Century Speaks. Interviewees ranged in age from five to 107 years olds and were drawn from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. British Library Sounds has made 395 audio extracts from these interviews available for anyone to listen to online. Each audio extract is accompanied by a linguistic description of the item. The interviews are geographically browsable by county and within this by town.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; environment; family; language; work

This website provides online access to ten extracts from oral history interviews recorded between 2001 and 2008 about life and work on Dartmoor. The complete recordings have been fully transcribed and archived in full onto CDs, which can be listened to at the Dartmoor National Park Authority’s High Moorland Visitor Centre in Princetown, and various other information centres, museums and libraries throughout Dartmoor. They are also available for sale through the website’s online shop.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; housing; industry; tourism; WWII

This project, also known as Fatherless Families, explored the lives and experiences of mothers living alone through a series of oral history interviews. It sought to examine both the detailed indicators and the subjective experience of poverty, as well as the problems faced by families as a consequence of both low incomes and lack of fathers. Topics covered in the interviews included housing conditions, living arrangements, marriage, factors that led to fatherlessness, family structure, work, health, diet, clothing and education. 119 interview transcripts (composed after the event) are available to download through the UK data service. To access the material, it is first necessary to sign into the UK data service using your institutional login.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; gender; housing; women; poverty

This study examined health history, beliefs and attitudes to health and medical care, inter-generational relationships and social history with members of a grandmother generation. The transcripts of 46 oral history interviews conducted with grandmothers from 1977 to 1978 are accessible online. The transcripts have all been converted by OCR from paper to searchable Word and .rtf format. In order to download the interviews it is first necessary to sign into the UK data service using your institutional login.

Topics: People; Science & Medicine

Keywords: family; healthcare