Blog

This week sees the opening of London Design Festival, an annual event ‘held to celebrate and promote London as the design capital of the world and as the gateway to the international creative community.’

Yank, the Army Weekly now available via the second module of Adam Matthew Digital’s Service Newspapers of World War Two, offers today’s researchers an insight into the life of the serving American between 1942 and 1945. The magazine’s different editions, New York, British and Far East reveal shared experiences, as well as those unique to the different theatres of war.

Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings which published last month is Adam Matthew’s first predominantly audio collection; produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and featuring materials from University of Washington’s Ethnomusicology Archive.

The resource includes hundreds of field recordings from all over the world; from Brooklyn hip hop, to European religious music, to Javanese gamelan. It’s been an exciting 18 months working on this project and getting to listen to music from around the globe.

On September 6^th, 1620, a group of pilgrims left Plymouth aboard a ship called the Mayflower, bound for a new life in what was then the British colonies of America. Almost 400 years on from one of the most well-known events from America’s colonial beginnings, it feels fitting that, here at Adam Matthew, work on our long-running Colonial America resource has finally reached its conclusion with the publication of Module V: Growth, Trade and Development.

Allow me to make something clear: I will find any excuse to treat myself to baked goods, and the return of the Great British Bake Off to our TV screens this week was as good an excuse as any to tuck in.

What on earth is a 'short snorter'? Assessing material for our newly released resource America in World War Two several years ago, I found myself faced with the archival catalogue of the National WWII Museum in New Orleans and this very question.

I am continually losing socks. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I don’t think I can even blame the washing machine because occasionally I will notice in the evening that, while I may have started my day with two socks on, I am now definitely only wearing one.

Love it or hate it, Love Island fever has undeniably swept through the nation for yet another summer and with the infamous dating reality show now gearing up to the final next week it seems appropriate to take a moment to step back in time and see how our eighteenth century predecessors went about ‘cracking on’.

On the chilly morning of 6 June, 1944 – D-Day – massed Allied forces attacked the Nazi-occupied coast of Normandy. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history and a pivotal moment of World War Two.

It has been 50 years since the words “that’s one small step..." were broadcast live to the masses, and the world knew that man had landed on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission had finally given the US the upper hand in the Space Race, more than a decade after the Soviet Union declared its intention to launch a satellite.

The Adam Matthew collection Arthurian Legends and the Influence of French Prose Romance, one of fifteen collections in Research Source: Medieval and Early Modern Studies, offers an insight into how one of England’s most famous nation-making myths was not only shaped, but transformed, by the literature of France.

In line with recent pleas to cut down on our consumption of single-use plastics, this month marks Plastic Free July. Anybody who’s been to the supermarket recently or tried to figure out recycling will realise how ingrained this material now is in our lives, as we shop for our plastic covered fruit and vegetables and try and figure out if we can recycle our yoghurt pots.

One hundred years ago today and after six months of protracted negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. 

On 29th June 1613, a theatrical cannon misfired during a performance of Henry VIII and set fire to the thatch of the Globe Theatre, engulfing the roof in flames. Within minutes, the wooden structure was also alight, and in under an hour the Globe was destroyed.

Chernobyl, HBO’s hit mini-series, thrust the catastrophic events of the infamous nuclear accident back into the public consciousness, prompting new discussions about how the disaster unfolded and who was ultimately accountable. Watching the series, we here at Adam Matthew were reminded of a Soviet-made documentary we had seen in the online resource, Socialism on Film: The Cold War and International Propaganda.

Dive into the rich history of Pride month, from the pivotal Stonewall riots of 1969 to the ongoing fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Explore key social and political changes through historical documents from the 1960s and 1970s, and understand the progress and challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community.

If you’ve switched on a television in the last month or two, you’ve likely caught a glimpse of Suranne Jones – all cheekbones, wry smile and top hat – embodying the character of ‘Gentleman Jack’. Anne Lister is one of history’s most iconic lesbian figures; her coded diaries shattered everything we thought we knew about nineteenth century “lesbianism” upon their rediscovery in 1933. Iconic female romances existed in Britain long before Lister’s notorious love affairs, however, and one such story can be found in our Defining Gender resource.

The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the deadliest battles of the War in the Pacific. Whilst only a small island, it held great significance to both sides. For the United States, it offered a position to advance an aerial campaign towards Tokyo. For the Japanese, Iwo Jima had a symbolic meaning, as it was the first Japanese national soil to face foreign invasion.

After a recently watching Disney's 1941 film Dumbo, I was intrigued to find out more about the origins of the film and the circuses that rose to popularity in the nineteenth century, and what better place to look than our fascinating Victorian Popular Culture resource.

Although the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in September 1939 led the United States’ diplomatic mission to organise an evacuation of American citizens from Germany, the Four Hollywood Blondes, a rollerskating troupe on a tour of Europe, were among those who stayed, owing to contractual obligations with Berlin theatres. Their tour took in performances in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, before a refugee ship brought them home to the United States.

We all seem to have plastic on our minds. The recent growth of public interest in waste reduction is unmistakeable, and as someone who has long been concerned about the impact of our throwaway culture on the environment, it’s encouraging to see. However, while one might be forgiven for thinking this was a recent phenomenon, the concepts of waste management and recycling are anything but new.

This week saw the 74th anniversary of VE Day, the formal acceptance by the Allies of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender. Famous photographed moments live on in public memory; a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square and soldiers dancing in London conjure up an image of all out celebration. For millions of people around the world, this was the case, but as documents from the newly published America in World War Two: Oral Histories and Personal Accounts reveal, reactions to victory in Europe were more nuanced than this.

Prior to foreign arrival, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) was a completely oral language. From the advent of the birth of the islands to our kūpuna (ancestors) who first called Hawaiʻi home, and from the volcanic deities’ love escapades to campaigns of warring chiefs staking claim over ʻāina (land), what we as Hawaiians know about ourselves and our collective histories was memorized and passed down from generation to generation via the spoken word.

A special guest blog by J. Hauʻoli Lorenzo-Elarco.

Last year marked 200 years since the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a novel that has since become one of the premiere titles of Gothic fiction. Rivalled only by Bram Stokers Dracula, it has been adapted for film, television, radio, opera and the theatre.The first of these adaptations (at least those recorded) however, is perhaps just as influential as the novel which spawned it. Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: Or the Fate of Frankenstein, is a three act play first performed in 1823 and is included in our Victorian Popular Culture collection. What is so astounding about this version however is that it features several elements not included in the novel which have reappeared consistently in subsequent adaptations.