…then when my mother-in-law died, we’d only been married a year, I found a cookbook and I kept that. And my daughter rang and she said, have you still got that recipe for Granny’s … I’ve forgotten the name. Well, … Continue reading
My dad picked me up and carried me around to me aunt’s house because she had a cellar, and we went down the cellar. And as he was carrying me around, I could see all these beautiful lights in the … Continue reading
Some of our Reading Sheffield interviewees had vivid memories of the contribution religion made to their reading lives. … the services were a bit boring but the actual working out [of] the words that I’d never heard, was fascinating. This … Continue reading
Gillian Applegate was born on 27 October 1941, in Frecheville which was then in Derbyshire but is now part of Sheffield. Gillian worked first in banking but later became a college librarian. She married in 1964, and her husband, Norman, … Continue reading
Writing up our own reading journeys has long been the plan for the Reading Sheffield team (here is our web designer Lizz’s reading journey). The threat to libraries across the country brought the task into sharp focus for me. Libraries … Continue reading
By Val Hewson and Mary Grover Dorothy was born on 26 January 1929 and, one of a family of eight, grew up in Malin Bridge in the north of Sheffield. She married Fred in 1953, having met him at the … Continue reading
The fiction policy of an English public library in the 1930s Here is a slightly edited version of a paper given by Reading Sheffield team member Val Hewson at The Auden Generation and After conference, Sheffield Hallam University, 17 June … Continue reading
By Mary Grover There was just room for a boy, his bed and a bookcase. In the early thirties there were few boys in Sheffield who were able to go to sleep looking at a full set of naval encyclopaedias … Continue reading
Judith G Judith was born on 5th May 1939. She is being interviewed by Loveday Herridge on the 14th February 2013. Loveday Herridge: Where were you born? Judith G: I was born here in Sheffield, further down Ecclesall Road from … Continue reading
In 1938-39, the book most requested in Sheffield Libraries was Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Seventy-five years on, this comes as a surprise. But in the context of the time and the role of a public library it makes sense: people … Continue reading