We live in a twenty four hour TV news world these days but during World War Two, over a decade before television really started to make an impact, it was British Pathé news reels, like the one above, that provided the cinema going public with newsreels, cinemagazines, and documentaries for over sixty years. The UK newsreels stopped in 1970, however, French Pathé News continued until 1980.
While radio was the popular source for regular news updates, the newsreel provided the visual content and a general overview of the war. Often they were as much about raising morale as they were about informing the public, as this Battle of Dunkirk newsreel demonstrates.
The British Pathé collection of news film and movies has been fully digitised, archived and made available online at https://www.britishpathe.com/
The British Pathé archive now holds over 3,500 hours of filmed history, 90,000 individual items and 12 million stills.
Wartime Slingsby Exhibition: April 26th
Come and find out about Slingsby’s wartime associations; from the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War, and preparations for war in the village from the Napoleonic wars up until the second world war, when the village was a centre for troop training and munitions storage, and welcomed evacuees.
For more details about the Wartime Slingsby Exhibition taking place on April 26th CLICK HERE