The archives of the left-wing activist Henry Sara include more than 1,500 lantern slides which were used to illustrate his public talks on a range of social, political and historical subjects during the 1920s and 1930s - from the Chinese revolution to 'the fraud of spiritualism'.

Sara made many of the slides himself, using a mixture of his own photographs (including some taken during his visits to China and Soviet Russia) and images taken from publications. He supplemented these with bought lantern slides, including two striking sets of colour slides purchased in the USA during the early 1920s (used for the talks 'Russia's labors' and 'Russia's struggle').

Want to know more about Henry Sara? - read our short biography.

Changing Asia

Photographs of Russian Turkestan (now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan)

The Chinese Revolution

Photographs of China at the start of civil war in 1927, many taken by Sara himself

Epochs of social change

Survey of the British labour movement in the 19th and early 20th century

The fraud of spiritualism

An attack on practioners of spiritualism - seances, spirits, levitation and Houdini in a box!

The French Revolution

Images relating to the revolution and its causes

The General Strike, 1926

Photographs and cartoons relating to Britain's only general strike

Imperialism

On European and American involvement in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America during the early 20th century

Ireland

Engravings and photographs relating to Irish history, particularly the 1916 Easter Rising, Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War

Leon Trotsky, the man without a country

Trotsky from childhood to exile in the 1930s, including his role during the Russian Revolution

Life and work of Lenin

Lenin from childhood to death, including his revolutionary activities and leadership of Soviet Russia

The Paris Commune, 1871

Photographs and engravings relating to the ill-fated revolutionary government

Russia in 1925

Sara's photographs of Russia eight years after the revolution

Russia's labours

Colourised photographs of Soviet Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution, focusing on the lives of the general population

Russia's struggle

Colourised photographs of revolutionary 'struggle' against the Tsarist regime, and the upheavals of the October Revolution and Russian Civil War

War and struggle in Germany

Overview of revolutionary German history from 1914-1934

Oddments

Lantern slides not identified with specific lectures - most are photographs of Russia in the 1920s