National Life Stories (NLS)
National Life Stories was established in 1987 with the mission to record and preserve a wide range of voices through in-depth biographical accounts, to make them available and inspire their use.
As an independent charitable trust within the Oral History section of the British Library, our expertise is oral history fieldwork with a focus on the long life story methodology. For over 30 years we have run a series of innovative interviewing programmes funded almost entirely from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations and voluntary effort.
Alongside the British Library’s other oral history holdings, which stretch back to the beginning of the 20th century, our recordings form a unique and invaluable record of people’s lives in Britain today.
In addition to running its own interviewing programmes, National Life Stories conducts commissioned histories that fit its collection aims and works in partnership to archive oral history projects from around the UK at the British Library. NLS also jointly runs a highly successful training programme in partnership with the Oral History Society.
NLS team and trustees
The NLS team
Director
Mary Stewart
Deputy Director
Madeline White
NLS Archivist
Charlie Morgan
Archive Assistant
Julie Melady
Bookkeeper
Pauline Morrison
Project Directors
Niamh Dillon (Architects’ Lives)
Hester Westley (Artists’ Lives)
Oral Historian and Researcher
Paul Merchant (Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach)
Project Interviewers
Cathy Courtney (Artists’ Lives)
Jessica Duchen (An Oral History of the Royal Academy of Music)
Rosa Kurowska Kyffin (Artists’ Lives)
Joanna Pieters (An Oral History of the Royal Academy of Music)
Elizabeth Wright (Voices of Cartier’s English Artworks Workshop, An Oral History of Theatre Design, Oral History of British Photography)
Collaborative Doctoral Student
Amy Crinnion
Daphne Jackson Fellow
Kimberley Chandler
Training Coordinator
Camille Johnston
NLS trustees
Jenny Abramsky (Chair)
Jon Agar
Fareda Banda
Bob Boas
Nelarine Cornelius
Andrew Flinn
Amanda Game
Bill Knight
Robert Perks
Jo Reilly
Mary Stewart
Paul Thompson
Janet Topp Fargion
Current NLS projects
- Architects’ Lives
- Argent: An Oral History
- Artists’ Lives
- Authors’ Lives
- Crafts Lives
- Design Lives
- Historic Houses: An Oral History
- Leaders of National Life
- Legal Lives
- An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-War Britain
- An Oral History of the Royal Academy of Music
- An Oral History of Theatre Design
- Oral History of the British Press
Partnerships
National Life Stories works in partnership with an array of projects around the UK, gathering in new testimony to strengthen the British Library’s oral history collections in alignment with the British Library Oral History Collection Development Policy. The NLS team works to support interview collection and documentation for these groups, and the experiences of our partners further develops our key methodologies.
NLS welcomes partnerships run by academic colleagues, community practitioners and heritage groups. Most partnerships are agreed when a project is applying for funding, so that NLS can help assess whether the project is a good fit for the proposed initiative. Please contact nls@bl.uk to discuss further.
When approaching us about a potential partnership, it is helpful if you can provide as much of the following information as possible:
- Project scope, aims and timeline, including an idea of the potential interviewees
- The number of interviews the project plans to record, and the expected duration of each interview
- What are the technical specifications the project will follow (audio or video, file formats, equipment you will use etc.)
- Experience of the team in recording oral histories and who will be conducting the interviews (e.g. paid staff or volunteers, academics, peer interviewers)
- Your plans for managing copyright and the gathering of participant paperwork and descriptive data about the interviews – to help plan for cataloguing, access and re-use.
- Any deadlines you need to work towards for this application.
Current ongoing partnerships include Why Me?, United Response, Rape Crisis England and Wales, an Oral History of the Law Centres Movement and an Oral History of Nuclear Test Veterans. You can find more information on NLS partnerships past and present in the NLS Annual Reviews, which can be downloaded from the British Library Research Repository.
Commissioned histories
If you are interested in working with National Life Stories to document the history of an institution or organisation, contact nls@bl.uk for an initial conversation. Any potential institutional or corporate commission can only proceed if it fills a gap in the wider British Library oral history collections, fits the British Library Oral History Collection Development Policy and fulfils the current aims of the charity as agreed with the Trustees.
Recent Commissioned histories include partnerships with Cartier UK, the Royal Academy of Music, Historic Houses and Argent Related. For more information access the NLS Annual Reviews on the Research Repository.
Discover our oral history content
The cyber-attack of October 2023 has caused significant IT disruption at the British Library. This includes access to recordings archived at the Library, the Sound and Moving Image catalogue and the British Library Sounds website. Teams across the Library are working hard to restore our systems and further updates on Sound and Vision services at the British Library will be posted on the Sound and Vision blog.
Until full services are restored, we encourage you to explore the resources below.
NLS publications
All back issues of the National Life Stories Annual Review plus research reports from selected projects are available to download in the British Library Research Repository.
Audio extracts
Listen to a selection of clips from full oral history recordings. Playlists include the oral history clip bank, the National Life Stories podcast, and extracts from An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Postwar Britain.
Video recordings
NLS has produced a small number of video recordings for particular projects and events, including An Oral History of British Science and An Oral History of the Electricity Supply Industry in the UK.
Sound and Vision blog
The Sound and Vision blog is written by our curators, cataloguers, audio engineers and other British Library staff, and members of the NLS team.
Train in oral history techniques
Discover a wide range of introductory and advanced courses in oral history practice, organised jointly by National Life Stories at the British Library and the Oral History Society.
Our methodology
Papers and discussions from the ‘The Life Story in Oral History Practice: An International Symposium’ feature in a special open-access edition of Oral History journal. This is essential reading for scholars and practitioners looking to learn more about the life story methodology in oral history.