On Tuesday, May 8, 1945, the front page headline of the Yorkshire Post announced “THE EUROPEAN WAR IS OVER AND THIS IS VE-DAY AND A HOLIDAY”. After six long years of bitter struggle, the British people had won freedom from fear and they celebrated in style. No more so than here in Leeds, where despite…
Author: Leeds Libraries
Owney Madden
Friday the 24th of April 2015 marked the 50th-anniversary of Owney Madden’s death. Owney – sometimes Owen – Madden was a legendary figure in American organised crime; a notorious bootlegger during the Roaring Twenties; an associate of Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano; the owner of the fabled Cotton Club; a childhood friend to actor George…
Two Centuries Earlier…
This week, we’re taking you on a short walking tour of the city centre – not as it is today, but as it would’ve looked in the early Nineteenth Century – using descriptions taken from the pages of The Leeds Guide of 1806. In the spirit of the original volume, which was printed by Edward…
Retro Revelry
The bank holidays and clement conditions of late have put us in something of a party mood here at the Secret Library, so we couldn’t help but get a little distracted while using our Yorkshire Post archives for some research recently. The cause of said distraction was an article by Antony Derville from 30 June…
Easter Scenes from Years Gone By
It was a wet and slightly chilly start to the bank holiday weekend this year in Leeds, but a look through our photography website, Leodis (www.leodis.net), shows that this isn’t unusual for the city at Easter time. Here’s a photo from Easter weekend two years ago, when the Trinity Leeds shopping centre first opened its…
Counties on the Cards
Tucked away in the depths of our library stacks is a little box about the size of a cigarette packet. Inside is a complete deck of Robert Morden’s Playing Cards – or, to be strictly accurate, a facsimile of the set, because only one original pack of these particular cards, produced in 1676, is known…
1920s Eclipse Fever
“Leeds never really went to bed last night. The last ordinary trams had scarcely stopped running at midnight, when a special series of ‘eclipse’ cars began the journey to City Square to meet the convenience of the thousands going to the shadow-belt by rail and charabanc.” This was the news that greeted the city from…
Leeds from the Air
This week saw the opening of the Britain from the Air exhibition outside the Central Library on Victoria Gardens in Leeds. This is a major national, outdoor touring exhibition of over 100 stunning aerial photographs. These images offer a chance to see some fascinating images of landscapes and landmarks and tell wonderful stories of Britain’s geography…
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