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Posts tagged 'Ministry of Information'

New Year, New… research topic

Happy New Year!

So, the time is upon us once again – adverts everywhere for the latest celebrity diet, queues to sign up at the gym and playing ‘dodge the jogger’ in Richmond Park – yes, it’s the cycle of ‘New Year, New You’ repeating once again.

I admit I am guilty of the same – my desk is piled with ambitious mountains of fruit and I am determinedly marching up stairs, glancing longingly at the lifts…

As we well know, this annual dive in to health and fitness is nothing new, and I have been searching for records that reflect this.

The idea came from one of my favourite images in the collection – ‘Lady cyclists riding down a hill’.

'Photograph group, lady cyclists riding down hill, (Sittingbourne)' COPY 1/435/62

Taken in 1898, the photograph appears in COPY 1, the original application forms for the registration of copyright at Stationers’ Hall. It is registered by Frederick Miller Ramell of Sittingbourne.

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Watching the skies and taking cover

Stars at night

Heavens above! Could a star save your life?

Sometimes, when searching through the catalogue (inevitably for other things), files leap out that simply have to be investigated. For instance HO 199/301 “British bombs and other devices accidentally dropped on England by British aircraft” (somewhat shamefacedly subtitled “also British mines”) does essentially what it says on the tin. But it’s an intriguing tin. However, even better is the neighbouring file from 1942, the bafflingly monikered “Journalistic astrology”. I wanted to know what journalistic astrology was. My guess was that newspaper columnists were making uncomfortably accurate predictions of military decisions but the truth is slightly stranger.