We welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill back to the Secret Library Leeds this week, for another short biography of a Leeds soldier in World War I. Keep a look out for one more article in this series coming soon… Eric Stowell is mentioned in the diary of William Smith. I found two links…
Category: Child Friendly
Great War Territorial Volunteer – Percy Longfield
We welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill this week on the Secret Library Leeds, who follows up her superb three-part investigation of a First World War diary with a short biography of another Leeds soldier of the time. Keep a look out for two more articles in this series coming soon… Percy Longfield is…
Cabinet Displays for Armed Forces Day 2024
Visit the Local and Family History department throughout June to see a display curated by our staff exploring two Armed Forces themes, as part of the Armed Forces Day Festival taking place across Leeds this month. One cabinet looks at decompression – the ways soldiers, sailors and air-force personnel relaxed or processed their experiences during…
The Leylands in Poetry
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…
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… Update: Dr Irving’s talk is now available to view on YouTube If I asked you…
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…
A Book to Dye For
In this blog post Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, shares a deadly discovery. One weekend I stumbled upon an intriguing article in National Geographic that highlighted the Winterthur Museum’s Poison Book Project, and it instantly caught my attention. I was captivated with the idea of poisonous books lying undetected in library collections,…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 