National Life Stories (NLS) is an independent charitable trust and limited company (registered as the "National Life Story Collection") based within the British Library Oral History section, whose key focus and expertise is oral history fieldwork. Since 1987 National Life Stories (NLS) has initiated a series of innovative interviewing projects funded almost entirely from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations.
Each NLS project is archived at the British Library and comprises recorded in-depth interviews, plus content summaries and (if funds allow) transcripts to assist users. Alongside the British Library's oral history collections, which stretch back to the beginning of the twentieth century,Oral History collections at the British Library NLS recordings form a unique and invaluable record of people's lives in Britain today.
History The proposal for NLS was first developed by Paul Thompson and Asa Briggs in 1985–86. The project for a "National Life Story Collection" had a number of distinct features; it was to be a "life story" project intending to collect full autobiographical material including both written autobiographies as well as recorded "oral history"; and it was intended to "record first-hand experiences of as wide a cross-section of present-day society as possible",National Life Stories webpage combining recordings with both elites (who at that time had been largely neglected by British oral historians) and a cross-section of ordinary men and women.Professor Paul Thompson, "Twenty Years of National Life Stories 1987 – 2007", National Life Stories Review and Accounts 2007/2008 pp. 18.
During 1986, Thompson and Briggs recruited a distinguished body of trustees, including Baroness Ewart-Biggs, Penelope Lively, Austin Mitchell, Sir Russell Johnson MP, Robert Blake, Elizabeth Longford, Professor Peter Laslett, Professor John Saville and Jack Jones (trade unionist). Advisors included Melvyn Bragg. Other important early trustees included the property developer Jack Rose and the first Treasurer, Peter Hands. With Lord Briggs as Chairman and Paul Thompson as Director, an inaugural meeting of the National Life Story Collection (NLS) as a company was held on 11 November 1986, and registration as a charity was obtained in October 1987.Charity Commission, charity overview for National Life Story Collection, 2017. Retrieved 7 October 2017.
Initial endowment funding for NLS came from Paul Thompson's gift of a Henry Moore sculpture (Working Model For Draped Seated Woman: Figure On Steps), which was sold in 1987,Sotheby's Sold Lot Archive. as well as donations from the Wingate Foundation and the Nuffield Foundation.
NLS gained the early support of Dr Christopher Roads, Director of the National Sound Archive (1983–1992) and in return for archiving interviews, NLS was given a free office in the National Sound Archive (then at Exhibition Road, London), materials and technical support. The appointment of a Curator in Oral History, whose role would be to work closely with the National Life Story Collection, was made in late 1988 (Dr Rob Perks, who took over from Thompson as NLS Director in 1995). The first projects established (all in 1988) were City Lives, The Living Memory of the Jewish Community and Leaders of National Life. Artists' Lives, established in 1990, is the longest-running continuous project, with more than 350 interviews. In 2005, National Life Stories was adopted as a trading name.
Interviewing methodology NLS was initially conceived to have two spheres of activity. One sphere was the creation of a "Life Story Archive" of manuscript autobiographies. However, the main focus was always to be the creation of a "National Biography in Sound", a collection of recorded and transcribed interviews of two kinds; the first was "autobiographical interviews with leading British men and women in all fields – politics, industry, administration, the professions, culture or religion"; and interviews with systematic representatives of ordinary citizens, beginning with a national cross-section of all classes and regions, and then concentrating on particular groups in special need of being recorded. All NLS projects were to follow the in-depth life story approach, starting with family background and childhood, and moving on to education, work and leisure and the community. This methodology has continued to be followed for projects, and each NLS interview normally averages 8 to 15 hours in length.
Oral History Programme Early projects The first NLS project was Leaders of National Life, which began in 1988 and which is still added to occasionally.Leaders of National Life webpage The project aimed to "record autobiographical interviews with leading British men and women covering their life experience as a whole" with subjects selected from all fields – including politics, industry, administration, the professions, culture or religion – in order to achieve a balance. The project specifically aimed to collect interviews with those life stories had not been recorded or published.
As well as the Leaders of National Life project, which was funded from NLS's core funds, NLS sought to undertake "Special Collections" with funding sought from professional associations, industry and other institutions – this is the model that has been used ever since. One of the first of these projects was City Lives, which also began in 1988. It was led by Paul Thompson (with particularly important help from Sir Nicholas Goodison) and later by Cathy Courtney. City Lives was funded entirely from within the City, mostly from smaller donations, but including an especially important grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. This project resulted in a unique collection of nearly 150 in-depth interviews of the financial elite of the City of London. The project culminated in an exhibition of memorabilia and photographic portraits of City interviewees at the Bank of England Museum, and in the publication of the book City Lives: The Changing Voices of British Finance (Methuen, 1996, ), edited by Cathy Courtney, with an introduction by Paul Thompson. A follow-up project, focusing specifically on Barings Bank (An Oral History of Barings), began in 2009 in partnership with the Baring Archive.An Oral History of Barings project webpage
Another "Special Collection", also begun in 1988, was The Living Memory of the Jewish Community (which ran until 1999);The Living Memory of the Jewish Community project webpage the project was led by Jennifer Wingate and received donations from Lord Young and the Clore Foundation. Although the original concept was broader, the project quickly focused its aims on the recording of Jewish Holocaust survivors in Britain, which at that time had been neglected."The Growth of 'Living Memory of the Jewish Community, Jennifer Wingate, NLS Newsletter Issue 2: Summer 1999, pp. 5–6. This project (helped with funding secured through Martin Paisner and the Edith and Ferdinand Porjes Charitable Trust) culminated with the publication of an educational pack, Voices of the Holocaust (British Library, 1994), edited by Carrie Supple and Rob Perks; the educational pack later became an online web resource on the British Library website, Voices of the Holocaust.
Visual arts and crafts NLS has shown a strong emphasis on recording those involved in the visual arts and in design in general, from architects to theatre designers. The first project to concentrate on the arts was Artists' Lives, which began in 1990 with crucial seed money for five initial interviews provided by the Henry Moore Foundation. The project, which by 2011 had more than 300 interviews, is directed by Cathy Courtney and is run in collaboration with Tate. Artists' Lives has concentrated on painters (through grants especially from the Linbury Trust, the Elephant Trust, the Pilgrim Trust, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Arts Council England) and sculptors (with key support from the Henry Moore Foundation).Artists’ Lives project webpage A smaller proportion of interviews have been carried out with ‘art professionals’ (with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation). The project had had a number of published outputs including the CDs The Sculptor Speaks: Extracts From Recordings With Post-War British Sculptors and Connecting Lines: Artists Talk About Drawing (which is also available online via the British Library’s website.Connecting Lines: Artists Talk About Drawing Some of the interviews with no access restrictions are available online to those within UK Higher Education via the British Library Sounds website. In addition, all of the open interviews, with no access restrictions, are available to researchers at Tate Archive. Recordings sponsored by the Henry Moore Foundation are available at the Henry Moore Institute; recordings sponsored by the Fleming Collection are available via the National Gallery of Scotland archive, and those sponsored by the Yale Center for British Art are available through their archives.
Architects' Lives began in 1990 and at 2011 had interviewed more than 100 architects.Architects’ Lives project webpage Crafts Lives began in 1999 and, at 2011 has interviewed more than 100 studio crafts practitioners, including glass artists, textile artists and furniture makers.Crafts Lives project webpage Interviews from Architects' Lives and Crafts Lives are available via the British Library Sounds website. Other NLS projects concentrating on visual arts and design (but which are no longer in-progress) include An Oral History of British Fashion (2002 – 2007); and An Oral History of British Theatre Design (2005 – 2008).An Oral History of British Theatre Design project webpage A project recording the life stories of British Photographers (An Oral History of British Photography) is carried out by the British Library’s Oral History section; some of the interviews with no access restrictions are available online to those within UK Higher Education via the British Library Sounds website.
Industry and utilities NLS has always strived to capture the life stories of those involved in industry. The original idea was for a project on "Industrial Lives", to collect life-story interviews from top industrial management from the 1950s onwards, in both public and private industries. However, instead of one large project more industry-specific projects emerged. The first of many projects to focus on British utility companies was Lives in Steel (1991 – 1992), which was funded by the General Division of British Steel through the support of David Grieves. This project resulted in the recording of 90 interviews by Alan Dein of former and current staff at all levels of the industry from directors to manual workers.Lives in Steel project webpage In 1999 another project focusing on British industry, Lives in the Oil Industry, began, a partnership with the University of Aberdeen, running until 2004.Lives in the Oil Industry project webpage The project resulted in an archive of interviews with 177 people involved in all sectors of the industry; a number of BBC Radio 4 Archive Hours have used material from the archive.The Archive Hour, Piper Alpha's Legacy The most recent project to focus on the British utility industries is An Oral History of the Water Industry, which began in 2009 with sponsorship from Cambridge Water, Northumbria Water, Scottish Water, Southern Water, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water.An Oral History of the Water project webpage