At DHC we are always excited to have the opportunity to work collaboratively with young people. During the first lockdown last year we were joined by a volunteer who is currently between her first degree and an MA. She has worked with us entirely online, transcribing some of our LGBT+Speakout! interviews, and beginning to analyse… Read more Analysing the LGBT+ Speakout Project
Following the huge success of my previous attempt at making a recipe from one of the old recipe books held here at the archives, I thought it best to give it another go. As most people are still home schooling, here’s an easy recipe with a dash of history added for flavour (although you might… Read more Cooking the Books (part 2)
In January, and despite all that is currently happening in the world, we welcomed a new member of staff to our team… — Hi everyone! My name’s Eimear and I am one of eight trainees in the third and final cohort of The National Archives Bridging the Digital Gap scheme. The eight of us have… Read more Meet our new Bridging The Digital Gap Trainee!
This February we’d like to think beyond the exclusivity of romantic love and open our hearts to all the affection and emotion which can be conveyed by a handwritten letter. Until the mid-twentieth century letters were the primary means of contact for people living more than a few miles apart and the pleasure of receiving a letter or note was often enormous – indeed the wish to correspond… Read more Posts from the Past
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching we wanted to look at declarations of love in our collections, in particular love letters and poems. There are some lovely pieces celebrating love, and the angst that goes along with it! — Firstly, from the Dorset County Museum King Collection archive is this very fragile 19th century example of… Read more Poems for Your Love
“…the oddness of the world and the surprisingness of mankind…” – Sylvia Townsend Warner Although not born in Dorset, the author and poet Sylvia Townsend Warner, fell in love with the county when she visited Chaldon Herring and the surrounding area in the 1920s. A prolific writer of short stories she contributed to the New… Read more Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) & Valentine Ackland (1906-1969)
Thanks to the generosity of donors including the V&A purchase fund and the Friends of the National Libraries , DHC was fortunate enough to acquire a substantial new collection of material created by or relating to Dorset’s literary titan Thomas Hardy. We thought that it would be good to share a little more information about the purchase and to explain a little more about why… Read more Thomas Hardy – exploring a new collection (part 1)
Making New Year’s resolutions is a tradition that reportedly goes back around 4,000 years to the time of the ancient Babylonians. Despite humans practicing making resolutions for millennia we seem to be quick to abandon them! This is the month that New Year’s resolutions most commonly fail, with 80% of resolutions being cast aside in February. So we’re diving… Read more How’s that new year’s resolution going?
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