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Read the latest British Library blogs and some of our most popular content from our archive.

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308 Items

Black-and-white photograph of John Berger sitting at a crowded desk in his study. Papers, books and writing materials cover the desk, with shelves of books and photographs behind him.

Blog

John Berger: a life in papers, pictures and sound

24 August 2026

Explore John Berger's creative life through the manuscripts, books and recordings held at the British Library.

A book cover of Graham Greene 'Routes sans Lois' illustration depicting several figures, a donkey, and some large cacti.

Blog

Graham Greene, from St Pancras to revolutionary Mexico

20 August 2026

Exploring Graham Greene’s Mexico writings and his travels through the country in the 1930s.

A hand-drawn colour map, which has been drawn across two pages of the open volume.

Blog

Rebels, refugees or subjects? The Sawantwadi Exiles

20 August 2026

The Sawantwadi Uprising of 1844–45 showed that the frontier between British India and Portuguese Goa was more than a political boundary.

Cover of a Ukrainian translation of Grimms' fairy tales with an image in red and black of a gnome dancing beside a toadstool.

Blog

Fairy tales for Ukrainian and Belarusian children

17 August 2026

The British Library holds many self-published books for children who were in Displaced Persons’ camps after the Second World War.

A photo of a three-tier white cake, decorated with ribbons and with sparklers on top, which are lit. The cake has stickers reading '75 IAML'.

Blog

Music Collections at the 2026 IAML Congress

14 August 2026

Colleagues attended the Annual Congress of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres.

Double-spread colour illustration of elegantly dressed woman and similarly elegantly dressed boar seated on an ornate couch.

Blog

Not just damsels in distress: women writers and fairy tales

13 August 2026

We celebrate five female writers who have had a lasting impact on the fairy tale genre.

Cover of 'Sunset Song' by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Blog

The Education (Scotland) Act 2016 ten years on

6 August 2026

The reform of state education in Scotland highlights sources of interest within our collection.

Colour illustration of a man kneeling in front of a woman between two trees.

Blog

Beyond Disney: Jiří Trnka and Czech fairy tale illustration

5 August 2026

Trnka's art allowed space for the more complex and darker elements inherent in traditional folklore.

Copies of books on African spirituality.

Blog

Thanking the orishas

3 August 2026

If you want to study the different strands of indigenous African spirituality, we have a number of titles on the subject in our collection.

Woman with long wavy brown hair, wearing rouge, a choker with tendrils, strapless leaf-themed top and fascinator with leaf-shaped fascinator.

Blog

Rethinking Cancela and Mesejean through fashion media

28 July 2026

Fashion magazines reveal a range of work made by the Argentinian pop artists in 1970s London.

A two-column extract of an article in the West Indian Gazette about women in British Guiana.

Blog

Women’s print and periodical culture in the Anglophone Caribbean

27 July 2026

Publications in the early to mid-20th century shaped feminist political discourse in the former British Caribbean colonies.

Team picture with five women standing in front of a ZSL 'celebrating 200 years' sign.

Blog

ZSL at 200: Science, Society, and the Natural World

21 July 2026

British Library colleagues reflect on their attendance at The Zoological Society of London's bicentenary conference.

Blog

Biology in machine intelligence: Michie’s ‘optimisable organisms’

20 July 2026

Biology and genetics were important influences on the work of AI pioneer Donald Michie.

Chappel library music, showing the brightly-coloured cover of 'A Place in the Sun', and an extract of the opening music of 'The Man from Nowhere'.

Blog

Exploring Chappell’s library music: printed scores and reissues

20 July 2026

Find the perfect soundtrack to hot summer days within the overlooked genre of production music.

Photo called 'Goanese Christians' showing two couples: the men wear European clothes and the women wear dresses resembling saris.

Blog

A reference work on Christian missionaries in 19th-century India

20 July 2026

The 'Indian Missionary Directory and Memorial Volume' sheds light on the people who set out to win converts in South Asia.

Entrance Hall and foyer of the British Library at St Pancras

Blog

Free things to do at the British Library this summer

17 July 2026

There's plenty to enjoy at the British Library this summer without buying a ticket.

Musketeers and Pikemen of the Sealed Knot march to battle at a re-enactment of the Siege of Basing House, an event in the English Civil War.

Blog

Re-enactments: authentic history or 'just dressing up'?

13 July 2026

Interviews with historical re-enactors from 1996–7 provide behind-the-scenes insight into a popular hobby.

Letters and other documents shown at a recent National Archives School workshop.

Blog

From networking to new ideas

13 July 2026

Reflections from the 2025–26 Fulbright-British Library Eccles Institute Scholar.

Blog

Research software engineering at the British Library

10 July 2026

Why should you apply for the job of Research Software Engineer in the Digital Research team at the British Library?

Watercolour painting of a man (Humfrey Wanley), wearing a black cap and facing towards the reader, holding a manuscript in his hands, with a vase in the foreground and a red curtain to the right.

Blog

Humfrey Wanley at 300

6 July 2026

We explore the connections of scholar and librarian Humfrey Wanley with the foundation collections of the British Museum Library.