British Library blogs

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These blogs express the thoughts and opinions of individual British Library staff members. You can subscribe to any blog by email.

Latest posts

'I have made resolutions to be good': letters of Princess Charlotte to her tutor

19 September 2017 Untold lives

Can you imagine the 19th century without Queen Victoria? If the young Princess Charlotte, only legitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales, had not died in childbirth in 1817, aged 21, she could have succeeded her father George IV to...

Richard the Lionheart in Speyer

19 September 2017 Medieval manuscripts

A major new exhibition devoted to Richard the Lionheart has recently opened in Speyer, to which the British Library is pleased to have loaned three of our magnificent medieval manuscripts. The books in question can be viewed in Richard Löwenherz:...

Bertillons and others: some language textbooks of the past

18 September 2017 European studies

Back in 1979 my introduction to the French language – and indeed to learning any foreign language – came via a textbook entitled Le français d’aujourd’hui (‘Today’s French’) and its central protagonists, the Bertillon family, whose adventures were generally recounted...

Recording of the week: Oldbury – a tour of a decommissioned nuclear power station

18 September 2017 Sound and vision

This week's selection comes from Tom Lean, Project Interviewer for An Oral History of British Science. For nearly 60 years much of Britain’s electricity was supplied by a fleet of eleven Magnox nuclear power stations, built between the 1950s and...