Life NATIONAL stories Review and Accounts 2007/2008 IN PARTNERSHIP WITH National Life Stories When many people think about history, they think about Over the past two decades it has initiated a series of books and documents, castles or stately homes. In fact history innovative interviewing programmes funded almost entirely is all around us, in our own families and communities, in the from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations and living memories and experiences of older people. Everyone has voluntary effort. Each collection comprises recorded in-depth a story to tell about their life which is unique to them. Whilst interviews of a high standard, plus content summaries and some people have been involved in momentous historical transcripts to assist users. Access is provided via the Sound events, regardless of age or importance we all have interesting Archive’s catalogue at www.cadensa.bl.uk and a growing life stories to share. Unfortunately, because memories die number of interviews are being digitised for remote web when people do, if we don’t record what people tell us, use. Each individual life story interview is several hours long, that history can be lost forever. covering family background, childhood, education, work, leisure and later life. National Life Stories was established in 1987 to ‘record first- hand experiences of as wide a cross-section of present-day Alongside the British Library Sound Archive’s other oral history society as possible’. As an independent charitable trust within holdings, which stretch back to the beginning of the twentieth the Oral History Section of the British Library Sound Archive, century, NLS’s recordings form a unique and invaluable record NLS’s key focus and expertise has been oral history fieldwork. of people’s lives in Britain today. PRESIDENT PROJECT INTERVIEWERS Rachel Cutler TRUSTEES Lord Asa Briggs Sue Bradley (Oral History Bob Boas (Book Trade Lives) of British Athletics) Sir John Craven PAST CHAIRMAN Niamh Dillon Stephen Feeke Sir Nicholas Goodison Martyn Goff CBE (Tesco: An Oral History, (Artists’ Lives) Steve Howard Architects’ Lives, Chefs) Barbara Gibson Penelope Lively OBE FOUNDER Anna Dyke (HIV/Aids Testimonies) Dr Robert Perks Professor Paul Thompson (Artists’ Lives) Mel Gooding Dorothy Sheridan MBE Hawksmoor Hughes (Artists’ Lives) Sir Harry Solomon CHAIRMAN (Crafts Lives) Vanessa Nicolson Jonathan Taylor CBE Sir Nicholas Goodison Sarah O’Reilly (Artists' Lives) Professor Paul Thompson (Authors’ Lives) Lydia O’Ryan Caroline Waldegrave OBE DIRECTOR Polly Russell (Oral History of British David Webster Dr Robert Perks (Food: From Source Theatre Design, Artists’ Lives) Jennifer Wingate to Salespoint) Monica Petzal ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Hester Westley (Artists’ Lives) NLS ADVISORS Jennifer Wingate (Artists’ Lives) Shirley Read Sir Terence Beckett Elizabeth Wright (Oral History of British Eric de Bellaigue TREASURER (Oral History of Photography) Lord Bragg Bob Boas British Theatre Design) Wendy Rickard Dr David Butler (HIV/Aids Testimonies) Professor Mary Chamberlain PROJECT OFFICER TRANSCRIBERS Melanie Roberts Dr Mark Girouard Cathy Courtney Susan Hutton (Artists’ Lives) Martyn Goff CBE Susan Nicholls Eva Simmons Dundas Hamilton CBE ADMINISTRATOR (General Interviews) Professor Leslie Hannah Mary Stewart FREELANCE ORAL Jenny Simmons Dame Jennifer Jenkins HISTORY INTERVIEWERS (Artists’ Lives) Sharon Johnson CATALOGUER Martin Barnes Paula Thompson Jack Jones Dr Alex King (Oral History of (Legal Lives) Austin Mitchell MP British Photography) Jon Wood Professor John Saville ARCHIVE ASSISTANT Louise Brodie (Artists’ Lives) Bill Williams Elspeth Millar (Pioneers in Charity and Social Victoria Worsley Lord Young of Graffham Welfare, Oral History of the (Artists’ Lives) VOLUNTEERS British Press, Down to Earth: Susannah Cole An Oral History of British Claire Fons Horticulture) Audrie Mundy Penelope Curtis (Artists’ Lives) Chairman’s Foreword Last year we celebrated our twentieth anniversary with a Over the last two years we have been ‘digitising’ all our reception, hosted by one of our founding trustees Jennifer activities. All our new interviews are now collected digitally Wingate, which brought together many of the key people, and stored digitally in the British Library’s new Digital Object past and present, who have contributed to our success. Later Management System (DOMS). Our content summaries and in this Review Jennifer and our Founder, Paul Thompson, transcripts include time-codes to enable fast access. We have reflect on National Life Stories’ early years: the struggle for also, as funds allow, been retrospectively digitising our older funding and recognition, the importance of the partnership analogue recordings, both for preservation purposes and to with the British Library, and the growth of our activities since make easier a whole host of digital applications, not least those early beginnings. use on the internet. The second phase of the Archival Sound Recordings project is digitising many of our Holocaust The original goal of the charity – ‘to record first-hand interviews for this purpose and we remain convinced that, experiences of as wide a cross-section of present-day society in the longer term, access to all National Life Stories recordings as possible’ – remains our focus. Over our first two decades will be via the web. we have gathered nearly 2,000 life story interviews for access at the British Library. This is a significant achievement by any Interestingly, the enormous changes in our society that standards. Added to other oral history collections at the British scientists and technologists have wrought over the past Library – notably the Millennium Memory Bank – it is now one twenty years have not been well documented by historians. of the largest oral history archives in the world. None of this Our proposed new Oral History of British Science project would have been possible without the many staff, volunteers, will be the subject of our energies over the next year. Armed trustees, advisors, sponsors and supporters who have so with the results of a scoping study, which re-emphasised enthusiastically grasped our purpose. This year’s Review the paucity of science oral histories in Britain, we are now includes a CD of highlights from the collections: it is a mere seeking significant funding to take this new interview one hour or so from some 20,000 hours of recordings, but we programme forward. This will be a fitting way to celebrate hope it gives a flavour of our work over the past twenty years. our first twenty years. 2007 saw the end of one of our longest-running interview programmes – Food: From Source to Salespoint – but also the start of a new project, Authors’ Lives. Obviously this fits with the British Library’s core business. It has been an enthusiasm of one of our trustees, Penelope Lively, who now chairs the Authors’ Lives Advisory Committee. We have, in particular, to thank the Arts Council of England and, recently, the Sir Nicholas Goodison Booker Prize Foundation for their generous funding. Chairman of Trustees 1 Review of 2007 Rob Perks, Director, National Life Stories Collections and projects This year we launched a new project, Authors’ Lives, with support from the Arts Council of England, the Authors’ Licensing and Copyright Society and individual donors. A project advisory committee was assembled, chaired by Penelope Lively, to prioritise writers for interview, and in July we appointed Sarah O’Reilly as project interviewer. Her first interviewees were Nina Bawden, Michael Photo courtesy of Albert Roux Holroyd, Paul Bailey, Dannie Albert Roux. Abse and Maureen Duffy. Further funding will be needed if the project is to achieve its initial aim of one hundred 2007 saw the conclusion of Food: From Source to Salespoint, interviews, but since we started the Booker Prize Foundation our major food programme, which has collected some 300 has agreed a donation to support recordings with shortlisted interviews over the past decade. We celebrated in June with authors from two selected years of the Prize, with a possibility a reception for key partners and supporters at the British of making this a permanent feature of the Booker Prize in Library’s new Centre for Conservation (BLCC) and launched the future. This is an exciting development which allows us Food Stories, a new educational website and CD based on to gather recordings with a wider range of writers than we the interviews. Although the main activity has wound down had originally envisaged, including some younger authors we expect to continue to collect interviews on a more modest at the early stages of their careers. scale in this sector, and are adding a series with leading chefs to the collection, with generous personal funding from Sir John We were also successful Craven. Albert Roux and Prue Leith have been the first two with a fundraising campaign interviewees, recorded by Niamh Dillon who also completed for Crafts Lives following the last of 39 interviews for Tesco: An Oral History. This Hawksmoor Hughes’ return project, detailed later in this Review, captures the story of how from maternity leave, and Tesco grew from Jack Cohen’s market stall in London’s East received particularly generous End after the First World War into the multinational success donations from the Sir story it is today, with annual pre-tax profits in excess of £2bn. Siegmund Warburg Voluntary Working with Tesco we have produced a corporate CD for Settlement, the Worshipful the company for release later in 2008.