This week’s guest author on the Secret Library is Andrew McTominey, a PhD student at Leeds Beckett University, who is co-supervised at the University of Huddersfield and funded by the AHRC Heritage Consortium. His thesis focuses on the reservoirs of the Washburn Valley, which service the city of Leeds, and the social and cultural impact…
Author: Leeds Libraries
The Magic of Harry Potter is coming to Leeds Central Library
Collections Manager, Rhian Isaac, talks about the upcoming Harry Potter: A History of Magic exhibition and programme of events in anticipation of the launch in December. It is 20 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published and we are extremely excited to be bringing the traditions of folklore and magic at the…
Writing Leodis
Librarian Mark Kirkby set Garforth Writers’ Group an offbeat creative challenge recently, using photographs from our local photographic archive, Leodis, as inspiration. On arrival, the writers were presented with a set of images showing a variety of places and potential settings, across different time periods. They each selected an image to provide a basis for a…
Traces of Tolkien in Leeds
Dr. Alaric Hall will deliver a talk at Leeds Central Library on the 12th of October, using the Special Collections at the University of Leeds, to explore the scholarships and friendships made by J.R.R. Tolkien during his time (1920-1925) in Leeds, and how these affected his creative writing. Ahead of that talk, Local History Librarian,…
On Some Pre-1841 Sources of Leeds People
As part of a series examining family history resources for beginners, librarian Antony Ramm, takes a brief look at some useful sources for genealogy in Leeds prior to the publication of the 1841 census… It is surely no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of people doing family history are well-aware of the Census and…
Walking tours of the back-to-back houses, Harehills
University of York PhD researcher Joanne Harrison has continued her collaboration with Leeds Central Library’s Local and Family History department and the Compton Centre Community Hub, hosting a couple of events as part of the national Heritage Open Days weekend. She reports here on the tours and exhibition, how to get involved in the latest…
Town Hall Terror
Local History Librarian, Helen Skilbeck, recounts a tale from our recent walking tours of Victoria Gardens – the area outside Leeds Central Library that has seen its fair share of history and still bears the shrapnel scars from an explosion 76 years ago… On the night of 15 March 1941, Leeds was under attack from…
Captain Cook and Doctor Priestley: A Library Tale for Our Times
Heritage volunteer Tony Scaife imagines a secret meeting of great minds in 18th century Leeds… Having borrowed a copy of Peter Whitley’s Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America from Leeds Libraries, I became intrigued at the similarities between the 1770s and today. As his many Whig critics claimed, Lord North’s bungling government negligently lost…
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