Fresh research has cast new light on the identity of Margaret Fairlie, an orderly in the original Scottish Women’s Hospitals group which established a hospital at Royaumont Abbey in northern France in 1914. Like others, I had assumed this was… Read More ›
digital history
Whiz-bangs on the web – digital history and WW1
What did you do in the Great Centenary, Daddy/Mummy? It is already the UK’s most expensive commemoration in history thanks to £50 million of Government funding. War was actually declared in August but the centenary started much earlier: broadcast and publishing… Read More ›
War turns into Peace – the 1914 Christmas Truce
British propaganda said the First World War would be over by Christmas 1914. It wasn’t. But peace of a different kind broke out on the Western Front when soldiers on both sides found their common humanity instead of the senseless… Read More ›
Bright spots for digital history
(This post appeared first on the allmediascotland site) Amid all the gloom that hangs over traditional news media, there’s one bright spot from an unlikely source. Digging up old stories and putting them on the web is flourishing. The fancier… Read More ›
Barclays withdraws from Society of Friends
Call me an old sentimental type, but I’m really well disposed to Barclays. As a former customer and employee I view their current misfortunes with a degree of sympathy. OK that was a student job at the Aldridge branch in… Read More ›
A treasure chest of oral histories
A key feature of digital history is its capacity to surprise. My good pal and cycling buddy, Iain Monk, who’s from Benbecula in the Western Isles, never knew his paternal grandfather, who died before Iain was born. But looking on… Read More ›
The Women of Royaumont – a unique film
This gem from the Scottish Screen Archive shows the work of some extraordinarily brave women – click on the picture to view. It is intriguing in many ways – as one of the earliest documentaries, perhaps the only moving image… Read More ›
Bish Bash Bosch – the first vital spark
Ignorance about the history of Germany abounds in the UK, although at least Misha Glenny’s series on Radio 4 is now redressing the balance. School history largely focuses on Hitler and the Nazis and far fewer children are choosing to… Read More ›
Just another football post
Manchester United in 1905/06 Image via Wikipedia Football has always been about finding the net. And there is no doubt that it has found it over the last five years with an explosion in newly-digitised historical material. Digital history is… Read More ›
Celtic FC take on the Irish Free State in 1924
Now is maybe a good time to dig in the digital history archive…… given the recent abysmal performances of Scottish football clubs in Europe. Click on this photo to view this silent gem from British Pathe. It is probably the… Read More ›