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More than 600 hours of recorded interviews with people from across the BBC and beyond has been made available today, revealing a hidden history of the Corporation from its earliest years.

The online catalogue has been unveiled as part of the BBC’s centenary celebrations. The unique new collection gives free public access to over 470 hours of audio and 159 hours of video interviews.

It features interviews with household names and figures from behind the scenes, including former Director-Generals, top broadcasters, vital technical, admin and support staff, and prominent figures from wider public life.

Highlights include:

• The first Director-General, Lord John Reith, interviewed by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1967.
• Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, remembering his early work in current affairs.
• Social documentary producer Olive Shapley, who helped bring to wider attention the devasting impacts of economic recession between the wars.
• A key figure in the community programme unit, Tony Laryea, who amplified the voices of marginalised communities.
• Prime Minister Harold Wilson and legendary film director John Schlesinger.

The collection has been made available through the Connected Histories of the BBC, a major six-year collaboration between the University of Sussex and the BBC. This Sussex Humanities Lab project was funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The project team, which included Professor Tim Hitchcock, Denice Penrose, Dr Ben Jackson, Mike Hammond and John Hughes, deployed expert research skills and sophisticated technologies to combine material from seven existing oral catalogues including from the BBC and from the British Entertainment History Project, which showcases the working lives of professionals in Britain's film, theatre, television and radio industries.

The new catalogue offers an innovative player that lets users listen, watch, read along and make clips.

The collection has been curated and contextualised by academics from the University of Sussex, including Dr Alban Webb, Professor David Hendy and Professor Lucy Robinson, who have placed the insights into a wider context as “100 Voices that Made the BBC” on the BBC’s website.

This curation highlights topics such as TV entertainment, World War Two, the Cold War, pioneering women, and multicultural and post-imperial Britain.

The final theme, Inventing the Future, celebrating the BBC’s technological innovation and relationship to social change is launched alongside the new online catalogue.

In addition, the project’s founding director, Professor David Hendy, has written a bestselling book, The BBC: A People’s History, interpreting this unique oral history archive. This traces the BBC from its maverick beginnings, through war, the creation of television, changing public tastes, austerity and massive cultural change.

Connected Histories of the BBC has also produced fourteen new in-depth audio-visual interviews to the collection. These include significant figures who have broadened and changed the BBC and who comment frankly on questions of equality, representation and diversity:

• Joan Bakewell, who discusses what it was like working on the review programme Late Night Line-Up and other ground-breaking shows.
• Lorna Clarke, BBC Controller of Pop Music, who ran the Electric Proms and speaks personally about how class and ethnicity can influence listening and viewing choices.
• Esther Rantzen, who reflects on her extraordinary career, touches on safeguarding issues and encourages the BBC to have “the confidence of knowing that it’s loved”.

Professor Margaretta Jolly from the University of Sussex has led the project through its final stages. She said:

“The Connected Histories of the BBC enhances and embellishes our understanding and appreciation of the BBC. And the online catalogue we are launching today gives each of us easy access into a priceless and extraordinary collection of insights, memories and experiences.

“I’m especially proud of the work we did with members of the public, engaging with them at events hosted by our partners in London, Sussex and Bradford. This helped us build a bigger, more democratic history of the BBC through people’s own memories of TV and radio. Anyone can share a memory of their own on the 100 Voices website.”

Professor David Hendy says: “The BBC’s oral history collection is an extraordinary, though underused, treasure trove, providing unique ringside accounts of the history of the BBC.

“Being able to see and hear these key figures in the BBC’s past tell their stories to us directly helps to bring the written history alive, but more importantly, reveals the ‘hidden wiring’ of broadcasting – the way personal convictions, character, and emotions helped shaped this profoundly influential public institution”.

Head of BBC History Robert Seatter said: “The BBC has a unique history and role in British culture. This great new project with the University of Sussex opens up our special archives for all to see and hear – it will be an insightful behind-the-scenes view into a hundred years of public service broadcasting.”

Team

• The Principal Investigators for the project were Professors David Hendy (2017-21) and Margaretta Jolly (2022).
• Co-Investigators were Professor Tim Hitchcock, Dr Ben Jackson and Dr Alban Webb.
• Web development and implementation was undertaken by Dr Ben Jackson and Mike Hammond, with the assistance of Tim Hitchcock.
• The project administrator was Denice Penrose.
• Interviews for the Sussex BBC-Centenary Collection were undertaken by Professors David Hendy and Margaretta Jolly and Dr Alban Webb. Filming and editing for the Sussex-BBC Centenary Collection was done by Catalina Balan, Louisa Streeting, Josh Harris, Lee Gooding, Luke Finn and John Hughes.
• Transcription of new interviews was done by Kerry Cable at Business Friend, overseen and checked by Denice Penrose, Prof Margaretta Jolly and John Hughes.
• Meta-data development was done by Denice Penrose.
• The post-doctoral research fellow was Dr Anna-Maria Sichani.
• Web text and background material were written by the project team.
• Helpsheets and training materials were created by Denice Penrose.
• Additional project work was undertaken by interns John Hughes, Mathilde Davidson, Madhushala Senaratne and Madhubhashini Rathnayaka.
• Additional technical assistance was provided by Dr Louise Falcini of the Sussex Humanities Lab; and Rob Cooper, Matt Haynes, Chris Newell at BBC Research and Development.
• The collation and transfer of the BBC’s oral history material was facilitated by Robert Seatter, the Head of BBC History, and John Escolme, the BBC History Manager, who worked closely with the project team throughout.

Partners

The Connected Histories of the BBC project worked with four external partners, each of which provided a substantial contribution-in-kind between 2017 and 2022.

• The BBC undertook the digitisation of all analogue recordings and original transcripts from the main BBC - Oral History Collection, the BBC - History of North Regional Broadcasting Collection, the BBC - World Service Moving Houses Project, and parts of the Alexandra Palace Television Society collection. BBC Research and Development also provided the new Speech-to-Text transcripts that accompany most of the interviews.
• The Science Museum Group provided interviews from its BBC - Horizon at 50 collection, offered curatorial expertise when it came to featuring BBC-related objects held in its own collections, and hosted public events at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford and the Science Museum in London. The partnership was managed for SMG by Dr Tim Boon.
• The British Entertainment History Project – previously known as the ACTT and subsequently BECTU – provided recordings from its extensive collection of oral history interviews, both for the 100 Voices that Made the BBC and this website. Curatorial assistance and advice was supplied by Sue Malden and Mike Dick.
• Mass Observation provided curatorial support and advice and supported a public event at The Keep. It also covered the royalty fees that allowed us to feature a selection of its archive material on several editions of the 100 Voices that Made the BBC. The partnership was managed for Mass Observation by Dr Fiona Courage.
• Although not a formal project partner, the British Library offered additional support. Its former Head of Sound and Vision, Richard Ranft, was a member of the project’s Advisory Board and the British Library hosted a public event in June 2018 linked to the launch of the 100 Voices that Made the BBC: ‘People, Nation, Empire’.

BBC-hosted websites – 100 Voices that Made the BBC:

• ‘Inventing the Future’, by Prof David Hendy (curator/lead writer), Dr Alban Webb, Dr Vicky Ball, Prof John Wyver, Dr Rupert Cole, Prof Jean Seaton, Dixi Stewart and Bill Thompson.
• ‘Entertaining the UK’, by Dr Jamie Medhurst (curator/lead writer), with Dr Anthony McNicholas, Professor Richard Haynes and Dr Siân Nicholas.
• ‘The BBC and the Cold War’, Dr Alban Webb with (curator/lead writer), Dr Will Studdert, Prof Margaretta Jolly and John Escolme.
• ‘The BBC and World War Two’, by Prof David Hendy (curator/lead writer) and Dr Alban Webb, with contributions from Lyse Doucet.
• ‘Pioneering Women’, by Dr Kate Murphy and Dr Jeannine Baker (curator/lead writers), Dr Emma Sandon, Professor Helen Wood, Dr Kate Terkanian, Dr Sejal Sutaria, Professor Lucy Robinson, Dr David Butler and Martha Kearney, with additional contributions from Dame Jenni Murray.
• ‘People, Nation, Empire’, by Prof David Hendy and Dr Alban Webb, (curator/lead writers), Dr Jeannine Baker, Prof Jamie Medhurst, Professor James Procter, Aasiya Lodhi, John Escolme, with contributions from Samira Ahmed.
• ‘Radio Reinvented’, by Prof David Hendy and Dr Alban Webb (curator/lead writers) with contributions by John Escolme and Ken Garner.
• ‘The Birth of TV’, by Prof David Hendy (curator/lead writer), Dr Alban Webb, Dr Jamie Medhurst, Prof Helen Wood, Dr Jilly Boyce Kay, Dr Elinor Groom and John Escolme.
• ‘Elections’, by Dr Alban Webb and Prof David Hendy (curator/lead writers) with contributions by Sue Inglish and John Escolme.

Project Advisory Board

Prof David Hendy (chair) (University of Sussex)
Dr Vicky Ball (De Montfort University)
Prof Caroline Bassett (University of Cambridge)
Dr Tim Boon (Science Museum Group)
Prof Hugh Chignell (Bournemouth University)
Peter Collier (ITS, University of Sussex)
Rob Cooper (BBC R&D)
Dr Fiona Courage (Special Collections & Mass Observation, Library, Sussex)
Mike Dick (BEHP/BECTU)
Prof John Ellis (Royal Holloway)
John Escolme (BBC)
Prof Tim Hitchcock (University of Sussex)
Prof Matt Houlbrook (Birmingham University)
John Hughes (University of Sussex)
Dr Ben Jackson (University of Sussex)
Prof Margaretta Jolly (University of Sussex)
Sue Malden (BEHP)
Prof Peter Mandler (Cambridge University)
Dr Jamie Medhurst (Aberystwyth University)
Dr Kate Murphy (Bournemouth University)
Dr Siân Nicholas (Aberystwyth University)
Denice Penrose (Project Administrator, University of Sussex)
Prof Simon Potter (Bristol University)
Prof Lucy Robinson (University of Sussex)
Dr Emma Sandon (Birkbeck)
Prof Jean Seaton (Westminster University)
Robert Seatter (BBC)
Dr Anna-Maria Sichani (University of Sussex)
Bill Thompson (BBC)
Dr Alban Webb (University of Sussex)
Prof Helen Wood (University of Lancaster)
John Wyver (Westminster University)

Digital Users Group

The Digital User Group provided advice on technology, and offered specialist technological advice to support the project. It consisted of:

Prof Tim Hitchcock (chair), (University of Sussex)
Peter Collier (University of Sussex)
Rob Cooper (BBC R&D)
Mike Dick (BEHP)
Adam Harwood (University of Sussex)
Prof David Hendy (University of Sussex)
Eirini Goudarouli (National Archives)
Dr Ben Jackson (University of Sussex)
Mahendra Mahey (British Library)
Denice Penrose (University of Sussex)
Dr Anna-Maria Sichani (University of Sussex)
John Stack (NSMM)
Bill Thompson (BBC)
Dr Alban Webb, (University of Sussex)
Dr Sharon Webb (University of Sussex)
George Wright (BBC)

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