British Library Newspapers

Yesterday my friend (and WHC Learning Centre colleague) Annette and I went to the British Library Newspaper Collection in Colindale. A place of pure function over fashion, the newspaper archive is tucked away in not-so inviting NW9. The staff were very helpful and warm to us first time users and we had a fruitful morning looking through the bound edition of The Cork Examiner from 1948, for a personal research project of Annette's. The newspaper was not at all what I expected, with a front page full of adverts instead of news. The rest of the paper was a small capsule of local (mostly photos of jumping horses, grazing cows and smiling members of the Catholic church), national (a column from Dublin), British (a column from London), and international concerns (mostly what was going on in Washington DC and the developments in Isreal and Palestine). Some of the adverts had familiar theses, like whiter teeth, lovely shoes, and clear skin. It was fascinating.