Oral History - guide to resources: A-C

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

As part of a reconsideration of 1968 as a historic moment, this international project conducted oral history interviews with those involved as young activists. The project has a broad geographic scope, encompassing activists from across northern Europe, southern Europe, and the USSR. Oral recordings of the interviews, along with written transcripts, are available, but only to those undertaking academic research.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: 1968; protest; students; translations

ATS Remembered is a private research project that records the history of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British army from 1938 to 1949. The memories and service details of a range of former members of the ATS are available to access online, including those who served as cooks, drivers, gunners, military police and wireless operators.

Topics: People; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: military; women; WWII

Project founded in 1990 by a charitable donation "to collect, preserve and disseminate the spoken history of Birmingham's black population". The collection includes oral history interviews with 25 people conducted between 1990 and 1992, who originated from the Caribbean or South Asia and covered a range of themes including first impressions, religious experiences, education, experiences of racism, identity, as well as their thoughts on the future. 5 interview recordings are available online through the link above. An archived version of the original project website contains many transcripts at https://web.archive.org/web/20190216022803/http://www.bbohp.org.uk/node/21 . Physical archives (incl. tapes) are at the University of Brimingham - see the record on Archives Hub .

Topics: People

Keywords: family; migration; race; work

This website provides online access to full written transcripts and audio extracts from 29 oral history interviews conducted with Bolton people about their memories of life in the town during the Second World War. The focus of the interviews is on the Home Front, but they also document some of the stories of those who were in Bolton for the beginning of the war and later joined the Services.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: childhood; naval history; POW; RAF; women; WWII

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

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Brighton Trans*formed records, in their own words, the lives and experiences of Brighton & Hove’s Transgender community. Using writing, memories, oral histories and photography, the project offers a snapshot of the rich variety of Trans lives in Brighton & Hove at a moment of significant change in how the community connects and organises itself.

Topic: People; Politics & Government; Arts & Culture

Keywords: Trans; community; Brighton; organisation

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

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 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 ]

Some sound extracts can be accessed through the Library's Soundcloud page.

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

The FEPOW (Far East prisoners of war) Oral History Project was established in 2007 with the aim of recording the memories and long-term perspectives of British FEPOW who spent time in Japanese captivity during the Second World War. The project was a partnership between the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), which has had a long-term interest in the health of FEPOW spanning the past six decades. Interviewees were drawn from a wide cross-section of services (Army, Navy, Air Force and Merchant Navy), ranks and areas of captivity. An audio clip from each of the 63 interviews is accessible online, alongside a brief biography of the interviewee. The clips are searchable by interviewee name, country, camp and ship (transportation and repatriation), or browsable by theme.

Topics: Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: military history; POW; WWII

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 project, organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, conducted interviews with key members in the history of the Commonwealth since 1965. The digitised interviews are available online through a dedicated website hosted by the School of Advanced Study. The project was designed as a Commonwealth equivalent to the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme based at Cambridge.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: Commonwealth; government

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