Annual Review & Accounts 2019-2020
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Life NATIONAL Review and Accounts 2019/2020 National Life Stories Highlights of the Year When many people think about history, they think about books has been oral history fieldwork. For over thirty years it has • In 2019 we added more than 800 hours of new recorded interviews and documents, castles or stately homes. In fact history is all initiated a series of innovative interviewing programmes to the collections. around us, in our own families and communities, in the living funded almost entirely from sponsorship, charitable and memories and experiences of older people. Everyone has a story individual donations and voluntary effort. NLS receives no to tell about their life which is unique to them. Whilst some funding from government. • 23 oral history collections totalling 6,139 analogue items were people have been involved in momentous historical events, regardless of age or importance we all have interesting life Each collection comprises recorded in-depth interviews of a high digitised through the National Lottery Heritage Funded ‘Unlocking Our Sound stories to share. Unfortunately, because memories die when standard, plus content summaries and transcripts to assist users. Heritage’ programme, including the Book Trade Lives and Lives in the Oil people do, if we don’t record what people tell us, that history Access is provided via the Sound and Moving Image Catalogue can be lost forever. at sami.bl.uk and a growing number of interviews are made Industry projects. There were 5,731 cassettes and 246 reels. available for remote web use through British Library Sounds at National Life Stories was established in 1987 and its mission sounds.bl.uk. Each individual life story interview is several hours • Oral history web page views totalled 1,217,224 in 2019. Our ‘Voices is: ‘To record and preserve a wide range of voices through long, covering family background, childhood, education, work, in-depth biographical accounts, to make them available and leisure and later life. of the Holocaust’ learning resource was the most viewed. inspire their use’. NLS is committed to recording testimonies that reflect the diverse nature of our society. We strive to Alongside the British Library’s other oral history holdings, which make sure that our own structures encompass this diversity. stretch back to the beginning of the twentieth century, NLS’s • Two collections of interviews with haemophiliacs and their families were used As an independent charitable trust within the Oral History recordings form a unique and invaluable record of people’s lives as evidence by the Infected Blood Public Inquiry investigating how Section of the British Library, NLS’s key focus and expertise in Britain today. contaminated blood product led to haemophiliacs and others contracting HIV/ AIDS and hepatitis C. FOUNDER ASSISTANT ARCHIVIST FREELANCE ORAL TRUSTEES (at 16 July 2020) Professor Paul Thompson AND ADMINISTRATOR HISTORY INTERVIEWERS Dame Jenny Abramsky Camille Johnston Jessica Duchen Professor Jon Agar • Our national oral history training programme in conjunction with the Oral CHAIR Barbara Gibson Bob Boas Dame Jenny Abramsky BOOKKEEPER Kirstie Gregory Dr Andrew Flinn History Society had a record year: in 2019 we held 122 courses with Pauline Morrison (Artists’ Lives) Amanda Game 1200 attendees. DIRECTOR Dr Katharine Haydon Roger Gavin Dr Robert Perks ORAL HISTORIAN (Legal Lives) Bill Knight OBE AND RESEARCHER Victoria Lane Dr Robert Perks • A new NLS Patrons scheme was launched with the generous support DEPUTY DIRECTOR Dr Paul Merchant (An Oral (Artists’ Lives) Dr Jo Reilly of Hodson and Luanne Thornber. Mary Stewart History of Farming, Land Shirley Read Professor Paul Thompson Management and Conservation (Oral History of British Janet Topp Fargion ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR in Post-War Britain) Photography) Jennifer Wingate • A major grant of £328,000 from the Arcadia Charitable Trust Jennifer Wingate Robert Wilkinson Oral history of farming, land PROJECT INTERVIEWERS (An Oral History of Oral NLS ADVISORS (at 16 July 2020) over three years allowed us to proceed with a new TREASURER Dr Niamh Dillon History in the UK) Sir Peter Bazalgette management and conservation in post-war Britain. Bob Boas (Architects’ Lives) Eric de Bellaigue Dr Thomas Lean NATIONAL LIFE STORIES Lord Bragg PROJECT DIRECTOR (An Oral History of British GOODISON FELLOWS Professor Mary Chamberlain • Our 2019–20 NLS Goodison Fellow Rib Davis completed his playscript Cathy Courtney Science and Britain Building Rib Davis (2018–19) Sir John Craven based on our Holocaust collections – Miriam – and a new 2020–21 Fellow was (Artists’ Lives, Architects’ Lives) the World) (to August 2019) Suzanne Joinson (2020–21) Dr Mark Girouard Sarah O’Reilly Sir Nicholas Goodison appointed. Suzanne Joinson will focus on three artist/craftswomen from the SENIOR ACADEMIC ADVISOR (Authors’ Lives) TRANSCRIBERS Professor Harry Goulbourne south coast. Dr Sally Horrocks Dr Hester Westley Susan Hutton Professor Leslie Hannah (An Oral History of British (Artists’ Lives) Susan Nicholls Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Science and An Oral History Dr Elizabeth Wright Business Friend Lesley Knox • We worked with partners to document the Coronavirus pandemic of Farming, Land Management (Crafts Lives) Lord Rees of Ludlow OM as it was developing and plan to archive testimonies in the BL’s collections. and Conservation in Post- VOLUNTEERS Professor Linda Mulcahy War Britain) COLLABORATIVE Laurie Green-Eames Ian Prideaux DOCTORAL STUDENT Jennifer Scott Professor Dorothy Sheridan MBE ARCHIVIST Emmeline Ledgerwood Jonathan Taylor CBE Charlie Morgan Dame Jenny Abramsky Chair of Trustees 1 Review of 2019 Rob Perks Director of National Life Stories Collections and projects order to assist in the ongoing process of improving farm businesses in response to changes in policy, food prices, An oral history of farming, land management and technology and concerns for the environment. With the conservation in post-war Britain interview with land agent John Young – responsible for the National Trust’s huge agricultural holdings in the Our major new project got underway, generously funded by 1990s – the project now turns to the experience the Arcadia Charitable Trust. We are capturing the experiences of land owners and managers. of those involved in the transformation of British farming since World War Two. Interviews with engineers John Matthews, An Oral History of British Science John Fox and Nick Tillett cover advances in tractors and cultivators and applications of robotics and computer image Tom Lean concluded his interview with Peggie Rimmer, Tim analysis in farm machinery. George Mackay and Ed Dart take Berners-Lee’s supervisor at CERN (The European Organization us on a journey through plant breeding and more recent for Nuclear Research – Organisation européenne pour la kinds of biological engineering. Other scientists interviewed recherche nucléaire) in the 1980s when the idea of the discuss the development of artificial fertilisers (Derek Palgrave), World Wide Web was beginning to crystallise. Peggie played studies of impacts of pesticides on birds and other wildlife a largely overlooked but important role in creating the (Ian Newton), and the science of Britain’s most voluminous environment in which Berners-Lee could develop the idea crop: grass (Nigel Young). Interviews with farmers – Poul successfully. She is the widow of Mike Sendall, the physicist Photograph © Sandra Lousada Christensen (dairy, Oxfordshire), David Morris (sheep, south who ran the on-line computing group at the time and who Architects John Miller, Neave Brown, Kenneth Frampton and Adrian Gale. Wales), Sir John Conant (mixed, Rutland), Hugh Oliver-Bellasis overcame CERN’s bureaucracy to get Berners-Lee the NeXT (arable, Hampshire), Pippa Woods (livestock, Devon), Christine workstation with which he programmed the first version Hill (arable, Norfolk), Jill Hutchinson-Smith (dairy, Shropshire) of the Web. It was rare for women to work at CERN in the and Nicholas Watts (arable, Lincolnshire) – take us into a world 1960s and she provided computing support for two future Niamh started interviews with Peter Clegg and Keith Bradley, in which land is valued in several ways at once: as livelihood, Nobel Prize winners; wrote the ‘brochure’ to support CERN’s partners of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. At the forefront landscape and wildlife habitat (see article later in the Review). campaign to build the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the of sustainable architecture, they are known for a host of Agricultural advisers Robert Hart and Jim Orson provide vivid 1990s; and headed the outreach and education unit at the civic buildings such as the business school at Manchester accounts of visits to farms and talks to groups of farmers in time when public engagement became a higher priority at Metropolitan University, and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, CERN. Peggie reflects on her interview with Tom later in and sensitive restoration projects like the East Wing at this Review. Alexandra Palace in north London and the Southbank Centre. A new interview has begun with David Levitt, founding Martin Charles Collaborative doctoral student Emmeline Ledgerwood Lisson Art Gallery, London. partner at Levitt Bernstein, who studied at Cambridge, one completed the final interviews for her study of the of the first cohort of students under head of school Leslie Privatisation of Government Science (twenty-three in all). Architects’ Lives Martin (designer of the Royal Festival Hall). Through Martin, Amongst