Now available in the Speaking Archives! part of our website: selected readings from the diaries of young Londoner Tom Flinn, cyclist, wireless fan, cultural critic and more besides, 1932-1935.

Two new features about our digitised sound recordings have recently been added to our website:

	A guide to the regional and other accents represented in many interviews, mainly from the 1980s. In England the interviewees' birthplaces range from Devon to Durham, with particular concentrations in the west Midlands, Merseyside and the London docklands. Whilst these are mainly records of working-class speech, professional people such as senior civil servants and social workers also feature.
	An introduction to the distinctive soundtracks of the management training filmstrips published by the Industrial Society in the 1960s. These mini-dramas give a sometimes amusing picture of attitudes to workplace issues at the time. Prepare to encounter both appalling and exemplary behaviour.

A re-discovered stash of photos from a young women’s charity

This scene by the River Leam during a weekend camp at Church Farm, Old Milverton is from one of eighty photographs which were left with other records in the Young Women’s Christian Association College at Selly Oak in Birmingham when the property was sold to the German-Speaking Congregation in 1978. Mrs Dorothee Muller, whose late father was the Congregation’s minister at the time, kindly donated them to us in February 2020. They depict YWCA activities and premises at home and abroad during and just after the Second World War.

Descriptions of the photos and the other records can be found in our catalogue, and you can see full digital images of some of the photos by clicking or tapping on the one above and these below: