It’s the annual Heritage Open Days festival next week and, to celebrate, we’re bringing out some of the best prints and playbills from our archives. A large selection will be on display in Room 700 (formerly the Arts Space) in Leeds Central Library on Saturday 12 September, 1-4pm. Staff from the Local and Family History department will be on hand to offer background…
Category: Events
Read More: Commemorating Waterloo, June 18 1815 – “The history book on the shelf…”
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer…
Read More: Magna Carta – ‘The Great Charter’ of 1215
by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…
Leeds Celebrations for VE Day
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…
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…
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…
2015 Anniversaries
It is well known that the next 12-months see several anniversaries of major significance: the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta (1215); the 600th anniversary of Agincourt (1415); and the 200th anniversary of Waterloo (1815). But those three anniversaries are not the whole story, with 2015 also marking several other events of historical and literary importance:…
