A to Z of the Guardian News and Media Archive - in pictures
From advertising to Zabihyan, we’ve delved into the Guardian News and Media (GNM) Archive to bring you some of its highlights as part of this year’s Explore Your Archive campaign.
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A is for Advertising.
The Guardian’s first advert was created in 1821 prior to its first edition on 5 May. It stated that now “seems a favourable opportunity for establishing a Newspaper”. The GNM Archive has examples of more recent advertising including this Observer badge from 1989. The Guardian’s sister Sunday title was first published in 1791.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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B is for Jane Bown.
The GNM Archive holds a near complete set of portrait and photo-journalistic work produced from 1947 to 2008 by Jane Bown, one of the country’s best-loved photographers. The collection also contains personal papers, correspondence, diaries, workbooks and artifacts relating to all aspects of Bown’s photographic practice.Photograph: Jane Bown/Observer
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C is for Cross Street Journal.
The internal staff magazine for the Manchester Guardian and the Manchester Evening News was named after the road in which their joint offices were located for more than eight decades. Today the journals offer an insight into newspaper life over the years and provide a useful resource for family research.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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D is for Digital Records.
As well as paper and other physical records in secure storage, the GNM Archive holds digitised and ‘born digital’ material saved in a digital repository. One example is the 1986 Points of View TV advert - converted from a VHS recording and viewable online at number 151 of the 192 moments that made the Guardian’s history.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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E is for Editors’ Files.
These provide an insight into the workings of the newspapers over the years. They include letters between former Guardian editor WP Crozier and his European correspondents in the build up to second world war, including Frederick Augustus Voigt’s observations about Hitler’s influence on Mussolini in a letter dated 1937.Photograph: Guardian
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F is for Food.
Food and drink is well represented in the GNM Archive, in image files and in oral histories from those who brought cookery to the newspapers’ pages. This page from an early Observer colour magazine in 1965 shows a typically vivid image accompanying one of many articles by Clement Freud, Observer Cookery Editor 1964-1968.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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G is for Gemini News Service.
Gemini was an independent news agency owned by the Manchester Guardian & Evening News Ltd from 1973 to 1982. Focusing on news from developing countries, the agency was famous for the captivating graphics used to illustrate its stories. The GNM Archive holds the agency’s records, including its original artwork.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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H is for Historical Reference Library.
The GNM Archive collects books and other published material that helps to illustrate the histories of the newspapers. Amongst these are the Guardian Bedsides, annual anthologies of the newspaper published every year since 1952. Other items in the library include Guardian style guides and exhibition catalogues.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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I is for Illustrations.
The GNM Archive holds original artwork by many Guardian and Observer illustrators and cartoonists including David Austin and Chris Riddell. This original cartoon was drawn by Les Gibbard for the 1970 general election. Edward Heath won an unexpected victory, forcing Gibbard to paste his head over opponent Harold Wilson’s.Illustration: Leslie Gibbard
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J is for Journalists.
One of the most influential modern British journalists, Hugo Young worked as political correspondent at the Guardian from 1984 to 2003. His personal and professional records include diaries, correspondence, working papers and meticulous notes of his interviews with key politicians of the day.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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K is for Kings Place.
The Guardian and the Observer moved to Kings Place in 2008. A number of historical artifacts were incorporated into the design of the modern new building to retain a sense of the heritage of the newspapers. These door frames for example originally lined the editors’ corridor at the Manchester Guardian’s Cross Street offices.Photograph: Sarah Lee
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L is for Letters.
Correspondence in the GNM Archive includes personal letters from Nora Beloff, who worked at the Observer from 1947 to 1978. Initially a Paris reporter, her appointment as political correspondent in 1964 made her the first female in that role at a major newspaper. She wrote this note to her mother on joining the Observer.Photograph: Guardian News & Media Archive
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M is for Minute Books.
The care of the official records of the Observer and the Guardian is central to the GNM Archive’s remit. This includes board minutes which provide evidence of high level decision making and help chart the history of the newspapers. This Observer minute book also marks the change from handwritten to typed minutes in 1948.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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N is for Negatives.
The GNM Archive holds tens of thousands of negatives covering the newspapers’ histories. Formats include 120 film, 35mm and 5x4” negatives. Among the earliest in the collection are a dramatic set of images of the Irish conflict recorded onto glass plates between 1920-23 by the first Guardian staff photographer Walter Doughty.Photograph: Linda Nyland/Guardian
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O is for Oral Histories.
The GNM Archive’s oral history collection includes Leslie Plommer’s interviews with Guardian staff members who covered the 2003 Iraq War. Journalist Luke Harding was one of these. As well as his testimony, he gave the archive a collection of objects he brought back, including this helmet and boot of an Iraqi soldier.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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P is for Pappillon de Metz.
This note of 19 September 1870 was sent by Manchester Guardian reporter GT Robinson via balloon, or pappillon (butterfly), to Guardian business manager Peter Allen. Stuck in a besieged Metz during the Franco-Prussian war, Robinson apologises for delaying his budget and reports: “Metz is healthy, strong and determined.”Photograph: Linda Nyland/Guardian
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Q is for Queen.
This image from a sell out Queen performance at Wembley Stadium in 1986, reproduced courtesy of photographer Allan Titmuss, is one example from the GNM Archive’s extensive library of 20th-century music and theatre related pictures. Other gems include stills from National Theatre productions and shots of The Beatles by Jane Bown.Photograph: Allan Titmuss
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R is for Reading Room.
The GNM Archive reading room at Kings Place is open to staff members and external researchers by appointment. Readers can access paper records from the archives, reference books from the historical research library and electronic records stored in the digital repository.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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S is for Scott.
The Scott family has had a long association with the Guardian which is still owned by the Scott Trust today. CP Scott was editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 to 1929. His leader article published on the newspaper’s one hundredth anniversary in 1921 contains the now famous phrase “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”Photograph: Guardian
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T is for Tandy.
Boasting a five line screen and powered by four AA batteries, the Guardian’s first Tandy portable computer arrived in 1983. Tandys proved a godsend for correspondents like Maev Kennedy who, thanks to the laptops’ inbuilt modems and telephone connectors, could avoid long, frustrating telephone recitals and file copy automatically.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
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U is for Units of Electricity.
The Manchester Guardian and Evening News Working Reports were produced between 1947 and 1989 to update staff on company activity, including the consumption of resources from year to year. As well as units of electricity, statistics for 1946-1950 included horses used and sponge cloths issued!Photograph: Guardian
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V is for Vita Sackville-West.
Novelist, essayist and poet, Vita Sackville-West wrote an ‘In your garden’ column for the Observer from 1946 to 1961. The personal comments found in GNM Archive’s collection of handwritten notebooks and correspondence relating to Sackville-West’s gardening column offer an intriguing glimpse of her personality.Photograph: Guardian News & Media Archive
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W is for Website.
If this A to Z gallery has whetted your appetite then there is much more to see on the rest of the GNM Archive website including different online galleries, monthly teaching resources, detailed descriptions of our collections and histories of the newspapers. Make sure to follow us on Twitter too!Photograph: Guardian
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X is for Ximenes.
The GNM Archive’s small collection of correspondence relating to Observer crossword compiler Ximenes (Derrick Macnutt) gives an insight into his popularity with puzzle solvers. Many of them attended a dinner to mark the 1000th Ximenean puzzle. This was his last puzzle, published in the Observer Magazine the year after he died.Photograph: Observer
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Y is for Youth Movements.
This image is from a youth movements file that forms part of the Manchester Picture Library (c1920-c1981). The file contains work by photographers including Don McPhee and Tom Stuttard. This group was shot by Robert Smithies at a Mecca dance-hall in Tottenham for a 1963 story on fashion titled Inside the Delinquent Gang.Photograph: Robert Smithies/Guardian
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Z is for Kimiya Zabihyan.
Zabihyan was the 24-year-old TV producer responsible for founding the Observer Film Company. Between 1988 and 1995 the company produced independent documentaries for major British TV companies. Shown are a sample of GNM Archive holdings for the company, including an image of Zabihyan with the Muang Tai Army in Burma.Photograph: Robin Christian/Guardian
