World War II sound bites

The World Ward II oral history project has been running for several years with thousands of hours of tapes available at the Record Office for people to listen to.  We also transcribe the contents of the interviews to help you quickly find the parts of the interviews that you are most interested in.

Jean North (Archive Assistant) and Joyce Hewlett recording an Oral History Interview.

To whet your appetite we have included some extracts of our oral history recordings for you to listen to through our website. Please note that you will need to have sound available on your computer and speakers or headphones to listen to the recordings. Please click on the relevant mp3 file to download and it should play automatically.

Wash house
A description of washing day (Frances Taylor).
Click here to download mp3  (216.28 KB)

Christmas Eve air raid
An account of an air raid that took place on Christmas Eve during World War II. (Alec McCabe).
Click here to download mp3  (865.87 KB)
(865kb, 2 minutes 27 seconds)
Click here to view a transcript of the recording  (24.24 KB)

Cold Winter
Memories of the deep freeze where even the bread was frozen! (Tom Averill).
Click here to download mp3  (488.72 KB) (488kb, 1 minute 23 seconds)
Click here to view a transcript of the recording  (13.50 KB)