University re-publishes audio archive of life in Coventry

Life in the Twentieth Century: The Richardson Archive, was originally published by Kenneth Richardson in 1972 and includes over 100 hours of interviews about life and leisure throughout the twentieth century.

The collection covers everything about life in Coventry, including the car industry, farming, local people, leisure and even wartime.

Pete Woodbridge, Multimedia Manager commented on the collection:

“We are currently working to get all of the recordings online and over the coming months we will be making more and more of the collection available so that it can be used by researchers, schools and local historians.”

Most of the recordings were made in the 1960s and 1970s with many of the people discussing life in Coventry long before that (some go as far back as the 19th Century).

Neil Forbes, History Lecturer at Coventry University said:

“This is a wonderfully rich archive that reveals the ways that the lives of ordinary people were affected by the massive changes in society that took place over the course of the 20th century. Now, for the first time, the collection is being made easily accessible.”

To access the archive visit http://www.coventry.ac.uk/itunesu