We welcome local poet Sally Michaelson this week on the Secret Library Leeds, who offers some poignant poetry about the Jewish community of Leeds and the Leylands area of the city centre. We are publishing these poems as part of Local and Community History Month. We hope you enjoy these poems. You can find out…
Thorne’s of Leeds: A Research Jigsaw
This week we’re delighted to publish the first in a series of guest posts for Local and Community History Month. Today, we hear from researcher Andrew Littlewood on his exploration of resources in our Local and Family History department, in his search for information on Henry Thorne & Co. Ltd… You can find out more…
Claud Frankland – Leeds Climbing Pioneer
“…Never a cloud of the many that are,That form and threaten and roll and dip,Never a cloud had risen to mar,The lovely radiance of comradeship…” (from On Great Gable, by Mabel Barker, 1927) This week, as the outdoor climbing season blossoms and Banff Mountain Film Festival comes to Leeds on April 30, Library and Digital…
Leeds and the Green Bin
To mark Earth Day 2024 we welcome Dr. Henry Irving from Leeds Beckett University, who follows a popular talk given at the Central Library last week with an article exploring the surprising recent history of waste and bins in Leeds… If I asked you to name a significant place in your home, the rubbish bins…
Dancing into History
We hear from Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill this week, who brings us a fantastic piece that is combines genealogy with a true crime twist… Arthur Morris, son of Samuel and Harriet was born in 1859. He had 5 siblings. Although the 1881 census had him working alongside his father in the family boot…
The Chimney Corner: Secret Books from the Secret Library #8 – Chronicles of Crime
Number #8 in an occasional series, this week we hear from Librarian Antony Ramm about a criminally little-known autobiography by a notorious member of the French underworld… We’ve praised the Public Domain Review website before on the Secret Library Leeds blog – if you’re not already a reader, we strongly recommend you sign up to…
Tales from the Horsforth Research Guide
Library and Digital Assistant Jan Pinder has been researching the history of Horsforth in our Central Library collections. This week on the Secret Library we hear some of Jan’s highlights from that work, as well as news of a research guide to aid other researchers into the Horsforth area, part of a series of guides…
I Was Here: Diversity In Medieval Yorkshire
This week we welcome back Danny Friar, one of our most popular guest authors, who offers a sequel to his important previous work looking at hidden, underwritten and marginalised histories in Georgian Yorkshire… It has been around a year since I last contributed as a guest author on the Secret Library Leeds blog so I…
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