Oral History - guide to resources: D-H

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

The East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) has collected, preserved and catalogued existing oral history collections relating to Leicestershire and Rutland. The interviews primarily cover Leicestershire life from the turn of the century to the 1930s and engage a wide variety of topics from WWI to influenza, education and work. A number of recordings also relate to the interviewees experiences abroad, particularly in India. The collected collections are browsable by topic and searchable by keyword, period and country.

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

Keywords: agriculture; community; engineering; family; religion; WW1

Now defunct website [archived version accessible] which aimed to improve accessibility to a collection of 444 oral history interviews conducted by Professor Paul Thompson in the 1970s as part of his study of Edwardian society. Included an online searchable catalogue of the interview transcripts, providing summary descriptions for each interview, five full electronic transcripts and a number of audio extracts. The complete set of paper/microfiche transcripts are held at the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive, University of Essex, and the audio recordings are held by the British Library.

Topics: Education; People; Work

Keywords: childhood; community; education; family; leisure; politics; religion

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

Records peoples’ stories about the sport of surfing in Britain. Edited highlights from the interviews and a short film about the project are available on the website. The full interviews are accessible at the Museum of British Surfing in Devon and the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Keywords: sport; surfing

This website provides online access to approximately 150 audio extracts from oral history interviews conducted with First World War veterans, their families, and those who served on the home front. The full recordings are held by the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive.

Topics: Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: medicine; military history; propaganda; science; WWI

This resource provides online access to 50 audio extracts from the Imperial War Museum's collection of oral history interviews with veterans and individuals who lived through the First World War. The sound clips cover the experiences of those stationed in various global theatres of the war as well as those who remained on the home front. The website also provides online access to an array of written primary source documents offering insight into the personal experiences of men and women during WWI. To access this resource from outside the Oxford University network, follow the link through SOLO.

Topics: Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: bombing; medicine; military history; Navy; POW; RAF; WWI

The sound archive at St Fagans National Museum of History holds recordings of a wide range of folk narratives as told by oral storytellers in Wales during the second half of the twentieth century. Stories from nine of these storytellers have been made available to listen to online. The entry for each story includes the sound recording of the tale, the text of the narrative, an English translation and background notes. In order to appreciate the international context of the narratives, references have also been made, where appropriate, to types and motifs.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore

Keywords: folktales; stories; Welsh

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 oral history project was commissioned to commemorate the 125th Anniversary of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Oral history interviews were conducted with Irish people about their experiences of the GAA and its impact on their lives. A number of these interviews are available to read and listen to on the project website.

Topic: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: family; migration; religion; sport; women

TUC History Online has provided online access to four audio clips from an interview with an East End striker during the 1926 General Strike.

Topics: Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: union

This website provides access to transcriptions of interviews conducted with elderly residents of the Glens abut their early memories of the area.

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

Keywords: agriculture; childhood; community; sport; WWI; WWII

Since the early 1990s the Imperial War Museum has conducted interviews with both protestors and military personnel stationed at Greenham Common Air Base. The Cruise Missiles sited at the base made it the target of an anti-nuclear protest lasting 19 years, from 1981-2000. The complete interviews are available to listen to at the IWM Sound Archive, alongside a larger number collected as part of a project on the Anti-War Movement from 1914 to the present day.

Topics: Politics & Government; War & Conflict

Keywords: anti-war; military history; politics; protest

A major collection of interviews relating to gay and lesbian experience in Britain. Originally established in 1985, as part of the Hall-Carpenter Archives. The oral history material is now in the National Sound Archive at the British Library - the link redirects to the interim catalogue.

Topics: People; Politics & Government

Keywords: gay; lesbian; homosexuality

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 with a total of 80 interviewees, including 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. 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 is working with the British Library to create a sound archive of British politics since 1945, and will provide a unique record of post-Second World War British political history. It is intended to interview as many former Members of the House of Commons as possible. The interviews include valuable insights into the lives of individual former MPs as well as the development of political careers in the second half of the twentieth century. They illuminate the changing patterns of parliamentary politics, the development of constituency pressures, the changes in parliamentary lobbying, the history of election campaigns, and many other themes. A catalogue of material is available from the website, as are clips from and summaries of interview recordings with former MPs. The full recordings are currently only available to listen to onsite at the British Library, St Pancras.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: government; politics

AHRC funded collaborative project between Warwick and De Montfort Universities which researched British television programming made for and watched by women during the period from 1947 to 1989. By interviewing women about the role of television in their lives, the project explored the relationship between television culture and social change, particularly in relation to gender issues. This project page links to publication outputs.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: feminism; gender; media; politics; television; women

[Remote access unavailable as an ongoing consequence of the 2023 British Library cyberattack - please refer to the interim Sound and Moving Image Catalogue]
British Library Sounds 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

Holocaust Testimony UK works with partner institutions across Britain and beyond to share interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazism. The website is an initiative of the UK Government and The Association of Jewish Refugees, created to advance Holocaust education by providing user-friendly access to thousands of recorded interviews. The database is searchable and browsable.

Topics: People; War & Conflict

Keywords: Holocaust; refugees; survivors; nazism