Great War online newspaper archive announced

By John Freeman on January 11, 2013

Daily Mirror, 29th June 1917 Cover

In preparation for the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, UK Press Online has announced it will be launching a multi-title Great war archive later this year. They are currently compiling the list of titles and will be announcing them soon.

The site already has a World War Two Package, which spans many titles: The Daily Mirror and Daily Express provide national perspectives from London, the Yorkshire Post a national perspective from the North.

Many of the papers feature cartons and illustrations that offer another layer of contemporary comment on war.

Opposing political perspectives are represented by Mosley’s Fascist Press (Action and Blackshirt) and the Communist Daily Worker. The site, which has a huge digital archive of national and regional newspapers, will be adding other titles to the World War Two collection in the near future starting with the Church Times.

While the site charges for access to national newspapers, from March 2013 they will be offering all of their UK registered users free, full access to an important regional newspaper archive. Funded by the ‘Your Heritage Lottery Fund’, this 40,000-page archive covers the latter part of the 19th Century and runs through to 1912.

• Visit the web site: www.ukpressonline.co.uk

First published on the Charley’s War web site

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.