Oral History - guide to resources: War & Conflict

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

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 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

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

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

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

The Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) has organised over 100 oral history ‘witness seminars’ since 1986. Witness seminars are group interviews that bring key participants to a particular event or policy together in front of an audience of expert academics and interested parties. The agreed transcripts from the majority of past seminars are now available to download from the site, along with expert introductions and additional background information. The past seminars are listed under five subject areas: Defence History, Diplomatic History, Economic History, Political History, and Science and Technology History. If a transcript is not yet currently available for download, please email Dr Michael Kandiah or Dr Virginia Preston.

Topics: Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: diplomacy; foreign policy; politics; science

[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

[Remote access unavailable as an ongoing consequence of the 2023 British Library cyberattack - please refer to the interim Sound and Moving Image Catalogue]
The British Library has made available online 65 oral history interviews with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust living in Britain. The complete audio recordings and transcripts of the interviews are accessible to everyone through British Library Sounds. The interviews were collected as part of a much larger project on the Living Memory of the Jewish Community, which ran from 1988 to 2000.

Topics: People; War & Conflict

Keywords: Holocaust; Jews; race; Third Reich

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

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 raw data consisting of interviews as well as questionnaires, observations and ephemera.

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

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

‘Observing the 80s’ makes available online a number of digitised archival holdings, which relate to the 1980s, from both Mass Observation and the British Library Oral History Collections. The aim of bringing these collections together in an accessible format is to stimulate academic research that spans current approaches to the decade, whilst also encouraging the collections’ use by a wide range of subject disciplines. From the Mass Observation collections, written responses from across the decade by 23 men and women, from a variety of social backgrounds and ages, were chosen for digitisation. The entire audio recordings of 26 interviews from the British Library Oral History Collections were also selected for digitisation.

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

Keywords: finance; healthcare; union

A collaborative oral history project from Queen Mary University of London, Trinity College Dublin, and Dundalk Institute of Technology, which aimed to collect 100 interviews recording the memories and views of key figures in the Irish peace process since the 1960s. The decision was taken to embargo these interviews for up to 40 years in order to encourage frankness. The project website does provide an extensive list of links to previously conducted interviews regarding the peace process under the Layers of Meaning Online Directory section.

Topics: Politics & Government; War & Conflict

Keywords: art; community; education; politics; sport; union; women

This searchable directory lists UK collections of oral history interviews relating to the Second World War. The majority of the collections listed have websites, and some of these enable researchers to download transcripts of interviews or listen to audio recordings or videos online.
[INCORRECT: this link is to the BBC WW2 People's War site - which is people's history but not oral history]
Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: portal; WWII

AJR Refugee Voices is the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)'s Holocaust testimony collection of 310 filmed interviews with Jewish survivors & refugees from Nazi Europe who rebuilt their lives in Great Britain. The interviews are not available to view online but some may be viewed on the Holocaust Testimony UK portal . All can be viewed by getting in touch with the collection holders. Summaries and clips are accessible on the website.

Topics: People; War & Conflict

Keywords: Holocaust; Jews; migration; refugees; WWII

This website was created by The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth along with a number of supporting partners. It makes accessible online a number of audio extracts from oral history interviews with those who have lived and worked with the sea in the twentieth century. The audio extracts have been divided into five key themes: Women at Sea; Diving into the Past (about the effort to find, excavate and raise the Mary Rose); Naval Medicine; People and Changing Technology; and Family Matters. Most clips now inaccessible after 2020 retirement of Flash.

Topics: Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: family; medicine; Navy; technology; women

The Second World War Experience Centre, first established in 1999, aims to collect and widen access to surviving personal testimony of individuals who lived through the Second World War. ‘The Clandestine War’ section of the website contains some written personal testimonies and audio clips from interviews. To access the entire collection, individuals can arrange to visit the Centre’s archive based in Walton, near Wetherby.

[no oral history material on this site currently]

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: intelligence; military history; WWII

This resource provides online access to large portions of oral history and other sound recordings held by The Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. The list of interviews is arranged alphabetically by interviewee name. The interview transcripts have also been indexed making them keyword searchable. The collection of interviews, captured in India, the U.K. and the USA, is very wide ranging and includes details of the lives and careers of members of the British Army based in India. A small collection of recordings of music and unusual languages is also accessible online.

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

Keywords: colonialism; education; industry; journalism; language; missionary; music; politics; women

The collection is largely made up of interviews with British International Brigade volunteers, but there are also recordings of interviews with medical aid workers, non-British volunteers, Spanish soldiers, Spanish civilians and refugees, and a few with individuals who fought for Franco. Six short extracts from these interviews are available to read and listen to online. The complete collection is accessible at IWM London.

Topics: War & Conflict

Keywords: military history; politics; Spanish Civil War

This is a school run project which began from a desire to record the experiences of individuals who attended the school’s Veterans’ Day in 2008. The complete video recordings of 43 oral history interviews are now available to watch online. The interviews are divided into two sections. The first section is on ‘The Second World War 1939-45’ and includes interviews with members of the fighting forces, with individuals employed as Land Girls, Bevin Boys and in the ATS, and also with individuals who experienced the war in Germany or were affected by the Holocaust. The second section of interviews on ‘Britain and the world 1945-’ covers a wide variety of subjects including the Korean War, sport, science and political involvement.

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

Keywords: Holocaust; migration; mining; military_history; refugees; sport; WWII

The UK Data Service provides online access to a wide range of qualitative data sets, including oral history resources. The collections are searchable by keyword. Researchers must register with the UK Data Service and state their intended purpose for any data accessed.

Topics: Education; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

Although not oral history, this resource provides online access to thousands of written personal testimonies about all aspects of World War Two.

Topics: People; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: bombing; intelligence; military history; Navy; POW; propaganda; RAF; women; WWII

YouTube provides access to a large quantity of resources, both oral history interviews and information videos on the conduct and practice of oral history. Some organisations, archives and oral history projects have their own YouTube channels.

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

Keywords: portal