As 2016 draws to a close, we have probably all read our fill of celebrity obituaries. Many of us will also have seen other, more local or personal losses. While the argument rages on about whether this was indeed an unusual year or just appeared to be so, we’re likely to have found ourselves thinking or wondering about some of the people whose deaths have been reported in the news – people we’ve heard of, people we’ve not (but feel we should have), and people whose summarised lives turn out to be a whole lot more interesting and varied than we originally thought.
If you want to find out more about a person and their life, use the library. Below, librarian Owen uses Fidel Castro as an example to show the amazing resources Westminster Libraries members have at their fingertips for researching history and biography, but you could apply the same principles to find out more about any of the people below, lost in 2016:
Vera Rubin, astronomer
Gene Wilder, actor
Jean Alexander, actor
Roscoe Brown, Tuskegee airman
Janet Reno, attorney general
Anton Yelchin, actor
Glenn Frey, musician
Zaha Hadid, architect
Terry Wogan, broadcaster
Harper Lee, author
Prince, musician
Denise Robertson, agony aunt
Owen writes:
We recently saw the death of former Cuban leader and revolutionary Fidel Castro. He was seen in death – as he was in life – as someone to celebrate and support, but also someone to despise and oppose, a great leader or a terrible dictator. We can look at how his death was met in newspaper stories, obituaries and images from around the UK (eg: through NewsBank) and around the world (eg: through Library Press Display which includes some newspapers from Florida).
However, your delve into newspaper articles does not have to end there. Why not look back further? Newsbank goes back a good 30 years for a start. But go back further still and you will find yet more. Have a look in The Times Digital Archive; you will find it interesting to see how events in Castro’s life unfolded eg: 1956 saw a failed revolt (the final revolution came in 1958/59). Ironically, considering some of the celebrations recently in Florida we see that on 12 November 1958 people were caught attempting to send Fidel Castro arms to support the uprising.
Don’t stop there though, have a look as well in the Guardian and Observer archive and continue on to the missile crisis (1962 – you can search by date on all databases). In 1968 it begins its article Ten years of Fidel Castro with
‘It’s hard to believe that Fidel Castro’s regime has now been in power for ten years.’
Last week saw the rather unexpected news of Leicester City clinching the football Premier League title. Was this really as significant as many newspapers described? The most uplifting story in British sporting history, or perhaps the biggest upset/shock? The team’s odds were 5000 to 1 at the beginning of the season having narrowly avoided relegation last year, after all. It was that and more, according to the papers.
To compare this victory with other surprise wins and ‘rise of the underdog’ stories, we should first take a look at how Leicester City’s story was reported last week:
Use NewsBank to search through all the stories about Leicester City being champions – you can even read Leicester’s local paper The Leicester Mercury. You could go further, following how the story unfolded throughout the season, starting all the way back in August 2015.
Read through more stories and see the papers themselves on Library Press Display – the Foxes’ victory was reported as far afield as Thailand, India, the US and more.
But why stop there? Have a look through other resources we have to see whether other sporting shocks had comparable headlines. Explore the tabloid newspapers on UK Press Online and take your search back further and further using the Times Digital Archive or The Guardian and Observer archive. Have a look at some of the suggested shocks mentioned by others: Boris Becker winning Wimbledon in 1985, Denmark winning the European Championships having not qualified, Nottingham Forest’s winning of the league and then European cup just after being promoted from the second division, Wimbledon’s crazy gang’s rise to prominence and FA cup glory in 1988… the list goes on. The headlines and stories are fascinating.
Football stories almost always involve a heroic manager, amazing team work and notable individuals (Leicester’s stories even discuss the importance of Richard III!). Whatever the sport you will see that the English press – and people – always love an underdog; often more than their own team!
The above is just an illustration of how library resources can help you dig deep, research and analyse a story through looking at how it was reported in the media. The same principles can be applied to any story for personal interest, school projects or other research.
A common complaint about news from UK-based newspapers, television, radio and even online news is that it is often too focused on what is happening nearby and not further afield. Countries with which the UK has less of a perceived connection are being left out.
This can be a real problem if finding out what is happening outside the UK is important to you, either because you have family or cultural ties with a particular part of the world, or a broader social or academic interest. What news is available will be filtered through the lens of UK or even London-based reporting – how might it look from another perspective?
It is possible to access more international and national news using the internet and Library Press Display is a great way of doing this. Showing the actual pages from multiple countries’ newspapers offers an insight into how things look from within the country itself. Library Press Display, along with a wealth of other newspaper archives, is free online to all Westminster Libraries members – just log in with your library card number.
My colleague Sharif’s favourite library resource is Library Press Display, as it allows him to read the news as it is reported in Nigeria. There are two really useful newspapers available: This Day and The Trust. The stories reported are important to politics in Nigeria, such as changes in government, and there are often stories which you may not otherwise hear (although there are TV stations available online as well). As with the press everywhere, each paper can be selective about which stories are published and can sometimes show bias toward either the north or the south of the country, or through ethnic or religious undertones. But they offer a different perspective than that of the UK press reporting on Nigerian affairs, and having two to choose from can also be enlightening.
Nigeria is just one example of the many nations’ newspapers available through Library Press Display. In a multilingual city such as London this is invaluable: if you are able to speak more than one language (or if you are trying to learn another at an advanced level), you may it useful for stories and current affairs in 60 languages from Afrikaans to Zulu.
Quiz time – what’s the oldest British newspaper still being published?
While you’re thinking about it, I will tell you that the oldest surviving paper in the world is Post-Och Inrikes Tidningar, or ‘Post and Domestic Times’, the official government newspaper of Sweden, founded in 1645. It took 20 years for the British to catch on that this might be a good idea but on 7 November 1665, the London Gazette was born.
The London Gazette was first called the Oxford Gazette, since Charles II and his ministers had wisely left London to avoid the Great Plague. To be honest, the first issue, as described by the diarist Samuel Pepys sounds a bit dull: ‘very pretty, full of newes, and no folly in it’, but things soon hotted up (literally) when the Gazette returned to London in issue 24, something the journalists may have regretted when they had to cover the ‘sad and lamentable accident of Fire lately happened in the City of London’ in issue 85.
You can read up on the history of the Gazette, and jolly fascinating it is too. But it’s not for news coverage that the paper is best known but as the official journal of record of the British government. It is published daily online and covers such matters as public appointments, military honours, bankruptcy, wills and probate. This makes it a fascinating source for family history… and just general nosiness! You can search it to see if anyone you know has had an army promotion (see if Great Uncle Ernie’s claim to have become a Major while doing National Service was true), become insolvent or been given an honour. With 350 years of records, it’s a treasure trove for genealogists.
The London Gazette is available free online, but for many newspapers you need a subscription to access their full archives. However, don’t worry – we do that bit so you don’t have to! Just go to our Online Resources page and scroll down to see what we have. Remember to have your Westminster library card with if you are on your home computer as you’ll need it to log in. Most of the titles are self-explanatory but there are some gems you need to hunt for.
ukpressonline is the archive of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express, but the package includes some other oddities you might not have spotted. In the World War II collection (which actually covers the period 1933 – 1945) you can find not just the Express and Mirror but a whole range of other papers too. While we certainly wouldn’t endorse the politics of Blackshirt or Fascist Week, there’s no doubt that they make fascinating reading and shed light on a very dark period of British history. For some political balance, there’s also the (socialist) Daily Worker or if you want to see a different angle, have a look at the (Methodist) Watchman or (Anglican) Church Times.
If your taste runs to the rather more scholarly you might want to look at the International Index to Music Periodicals and International Index to the Performing Arts. Both do what they say on the tin – they are searchable databases of over a thousand publications covering the full range of music, stage and screen and endlessly fascinating to anyone with an interest in the arts.
But if what you want to do is just read a newspaper, we have LibraryPressDisplay. On the left hand side of the display, pick a country and see what’s available. If you choose the United Kingdom you can browse through the latest issues of over a hundred newspapers and magazines. If you’re more interested in what’s happening on the other side of the Channel, there’s about the same amount of French and German papers though Finland is only represented by 16 titles and Bulgaria a mere five. Whichever part of the world you’re looking for, there’s bound to be a newspaper – there are 25 Lebanese periodicals, all available on the day of publication. So whether you’re researching your travels or feeling a little homesick, have a look and see what you can find. You may even see your own hometown paper.
One of my great regrets from childhood was that whilst on holiday in Zimbabwe I was too grumpy to go on a journey to visit Great Zimbabwe. Reading through an article from the Encyclopedia of Archaeology on our online resource Credo Reference (log in with your library card number), we learn just how amazing and historically important it is; it describes the site as “possibly the largest settlement in Sub-Saharan Africa”.
There are stone towers, steps and many buildings covering a wide area
It survived for over 500 years between 900 and 1450 AD
It gained its wealth from gathering local gold and other resources, and traded with other distant civilizations as far away as China
When the area was discovered by Europeans, there was a misapprehension that something so complex must have come from another outside ancient civilization (maybe China, India… some even suggesting it was King Solomon’s Mines). For a great many years the site suffered from looting and damage from those who did not place any value on the history of the site. Both these issues the article describes as attempts to strip the indigenous population of their history and archeological heritage. Indeed, acknowledgement of its origin and importance is seen as growing only in 1929/30 with the visit of Gertrude Caton-Thompson, when ideas of its creation by “a vigorous native civilization” were given some credence. It was almost as though many could not believe that the indigenous people could have been “a national organization of a high kind of originality and industry” (as quoted from the Times Digital Archive from 1929).
Fifty years ago, in November 1965, Rhodesia broke away from the UK. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence brought to the fore racial inequality and minority rule in the country. After many years of war, independence was internationally and legally recognized and elections took place involving the whole population. The new country of Zimbabwe took its very name from the houses of stone and the culture which surrounded them. The new currency displayed images of Great Zimbabwe (I loved the image of the stone tower on the Zimbabwean dollar) and the unique artifact known as the Zimbabwe Bird is displayed prominently on the flag. Indeed, the importance of this bird can be seen through the return of several examples of them by the South African government after independence was recognized (perhaps read an article from the time such as this one from the Guardian: Rock of ages, Zimbabwe (4 February 1981).
Sadly there are still a great many problems in the country, but perhaps the history of this ancient civilization can help inspire the creation of a community which can live together for several hundred years, trading with the outside world as did those who lived there all that time ago.
Other lessons must be learnt from what has happened with Great Zimbabwe: the importance of history, seeing past any prejudices/preconceptions and aiming to learn more (including trying to learn from our past), the evils of destroying or stealing archaeological artifacts for short-term gain, there is more to history including black and African History than we hear about on a day-to-day basis… and finally, if you are young and tend to get grumpy don’t let it spoil your chances of seeing/doing something special which you will remember forever!
Recently I noticed the name plaque “Copperfield House” erected on a building at the junction of Beaumont Street with Marylebone High Street. It was named after the Dickens character David Copperfield which was one of six novels written between 1839-51 at the house 1 Devonshire Terrace, situated a few hundred meters away:
1 Devonshire Terrace, where Dickens lived, from Marylebone Road (Image sourced from The Victorian Web)
Despite protests, this house situated on the south side of Marylebone Road was demolished in the late 1950s to make way for an office block, Ferguson House. To get some idea what this house’s interior might have looked like, why not visit the house he occupied in Doughty Street WC1?
The Dickens household moved to Tavistock Square in 1851 with the ending of the Devonshire Terrace lease. 1851 was a traumatic year for Dickens – it included the death of his father, his wife’s illness and the death of their youngest daughter Dora in April, so it was not surprising that he did not renew the lease. The rate book entry includes the hand written comment “house empty from November 1851”.
Conveniently this year coincided with a national Census, so I visited Westminster Archives to consult the microfilmed Census enumerator returns for a snapshot of the household. To my surprise the Devonshire Terrace household on Census night only consisted of the Dickens children, who had been left in the care of a cook, a nursery maid and also a wet nurse for seven month old Dora. Where were the parents? Using Ancestry and Find My Past I found them. On Census night Charles Dickens is listed as a visitor at an address in Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, attending to his dying father. His wife Catherine, suffering from a nervous condition, was at Malvern taking the water cure. She was in Malvern when her daughter died two weeks later.
It is worth braving the Marylebone Road traffic fumes to visit Ferguson House at number 15 for the unexpected sight of a huge panel sculpted by Estcourt J Clack (1906-1973) commemorating some of the characters Dickens created while resident Devonshire Terrace – including David Copperfield.
The parish church was used for a baptism scene in his novel Dombey and Son. You can read this scene on pages 12-13 of a pdf Full History of the Church guide on the St Marylebone Church website.
Dickens’ father John was born in Marylebone and had been baptised at the previous Marylebone Church, situated immediately to the south of the current church. Dickens also had a number of relations on his mother’s side who lived in the Marylebone and Oxford Street area. Thus it is not surprising that when his parents first moved to London from Portsmouth in 1814 (when Dickens was two), they lodged in the Marylebone/Fitzrovia area at 10 Norfolk Street (now 22 Cleveland Street W1). Although the family initially resided here for two years, Dickens returned to the same house in 1829. He gave this address as his residence when he applied for a reader’s ticket at the British Museum in 1830.
North of this house, the St. Marylebone and St. Pancras parish boundary ran north south following the line of an ancient track Green Lane which with urbanisation became Cleveland Street. At the junction with Tottenham Street the boundary veered off south east thus incorporated Dickens’ house within St. Marylebone. A subsequent amendment of administrative boundaries has meant that the Camden and Westminster boundary now continues along the line of Cleveland Street south towards Goodge Street so that this house now falls within Camden.
The former boundary is graphically illustrated by this image of a 19th century St Pancras parish marker placed on the side wall of a house on Tottenham Street. Note the “plaque wall” continues as the back wall of number 10 Norfolk Street. The blank wall meeting it at right angles on the right of the image is actually the side of Dickens’ former residence.
A good description of the Norfolk Street area and local observed influences upon his works e.g. the Cleveland Street workhouse, are highlighted in a recent book Dickens and the workhouse: Oliver Twist and the London poor by Ruth Richardson. The book also includes several recent photographs of the house interior which has not been greatly altered since.
The author describes how she identified the house from using a number of sources including maps and rate books held at Westminster Archives (see a previous blog on this work). Note that there has been some controversy over the author’s claim that the house location was unknown. Several people have pointed out that it was accurately located in several previous Dickens’ studies. What is not in doubt is that the book and controversy has resulted in the house being recognised by the Dickens Fellowship who has now erected a blue wall plaque on the house front. The book also describes the successful preservation campaign to save from demolition the adjacent Cleveland Street Workhouse building, the probable inspiration for Oliver Twist.
Ruth Richardson also found several local names that are linked with characters. For example Bill Sykes and Sam Weller have their real life name counterparts in two local shop keepers. William Sykes was an oil lamp oil seller and also within this street was a shoe seller Dan Weller. These links were highlighted in a Guardian interview with Dalya Alberge dated Thursday 2 February 2012. This can be read using the 24/7 newspaper resource NewsBank (log in with your library card number).
Charles Dickens is not the only major Victorian novelist with Marylebone roots. His great friend the novelist Wilkie Collins was born and lived much of his life in the Marylebone area. There is a recently erected Westminster green plaque to mark the site of his birth on the block of flats at 96-100 New Cavendish Street.
Both authors are included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Charles Dickens surprisingly also merits an entry in the Contemporary Authors literature resource. You can access both these reosurces from home with your library card. Finally, both authors’ writings are discussed in the multi-volume Nineteenth-century literature criticism series held at Marylebone Library. This is a valuable resource for literature students and anyone else interested in researching a specific author and their work.
Finally, an exciting Dickens discovery was announced in July 2015 by The Independent. Dickens was editor of a journal “All the Year Round”. A researcher, after purchasing bound volumes of this journal, found that these were Dickens’ own copies and they had a number of handwritten annotations identifying the anonymous contributors to the journal who included major authors such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins and Lewis Carroll! You can read more about this discovery on Library Press Display or NewsBank(log in with your library card).
Although I regularly direct library users to newspapers from other countries, it was not until I began researching material for this blog that I really appreciated the full extent of the library service’s coverage! It’s quite something.
A quick search of the Periodicals catalogue (known as WULOP – see below for more information) reveals Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese language newspapers. Other Asian language papers include Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu titles. European languages are represented by French, German, Italian and Spanish titles. America is represented by the European editions of the International New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Some of the foreign titles are also written wholly or partly in English, so provide a useful alternative current affairs perspective for non-multilinguists to use.
Other titles aimed at specific ethnic groups such as The Voice or the Jewish Chronicle, while published in the UK, should not be forgotten as they contain detailed news coverage relating to the West Indies and Middle East respectively, as well as their British coverage.
In addition to these physical copies located within libraries, an enormous number of foreign newspapers can also be read online using the 24/7 online resource Library PressDisplay. We’ve posted about this amazing resource before – see previous posts.
Come in and have a look, or use your library membership card to search Library Press Display – there’s a whole world out there!
As you can see from this image there are several ways of searching for a specific title or titles.
Search by Title – either type a title in the box or use the drop down menu to display an alphabetical list and select from it a specific title. Click on the chosen title to display locations and holdings.
Search by Subject – this drop down menu includes countries, eg: Iran and Iranian. Choosing this will display foreign newspaper titles relevant to that country or region.
Search by Location – this will display all newspaper and periodical titles subscribed to by a specific library.
Search by Keyword – this will find keywords either within a title and/or a subject term assigned to each specific title.
This is the entry for the Sing Tao Daily Chinese newspaper. The catalogue entry displays library locations for this title and also the back issue file length. Note different branches often have different file lengths so use WULOP to discover which library should have the required issue. It is advisable to contact the library before visiting to check whether the specific issue is in stock, as occasionally issues are stolen :-(. A more common reason for a library not to have a specific issue is simply that the newsagent did not receive any copies at all on that particular day. A number of foreign newspapers are imported and then, via wholesalers, sent to newsagents. Poor weather, strikes and other issues can delay or prevent issues from reaching the newsagent.
This was what someone had to say about Library Press Display, one of our amazing online resources, available to all members of Westminster Libraries. Last week I showed him how it was possible to get different magazines and newspapers using our website and that you don’t even need to be in the library to use them – they can be accessed at home as well.
Library Press Display has to be one of my favourites. It allows you to read the papers as they look that very day – the current copy. Not just one or two newspapers either, but papers and some magazines from around the world in a huge variety of languages – also on the day they are published!
I loved it from the moment I saw it but didn’t believe that we could have access to anything that amazing; would they really allow our library members to access all this? Yes, they would and yes, they do.
Of course as the visit by this particular customer proves, using this or any other online resource doesn’t have to mean the end to all your visits to your local library so do continue to drop by.
Library Press Display is one of several online newspaper resources useful for anything from finding recent articles and looking at today’s stories to historical research. Just go to: www.westminster.gov.uk/online-resources-by-subject.
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A common complaint about news from UK-based newspapers, television, radio and even online news is that it is often too focused on what is happening nearby and not further afield. Countries with which the UK has less of a perceived connection are being left out.
Recently I noticed the name plaque “Copperfield House” erected on a building at the junction of Beaumont Street with Marylebone High Street. It was named after the Dickens character 
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