Research Guides: HIST 150: WWII Britain: The People's War (Spring 2025): Primary Sources

Not sure were to start? Try the main catalog.

The Main Library Catalog searches our entire print collection (including Special Collections) and about 60% of our databases.

If you're unsure where to start a primary source search, try a keyword search and then limit "publication date" to your period of interest.
Example:

Use Subject Terms to find historic materials in the collection.

Personal narratives
- Example
Correspondence
- Example
Biography
- Example
Interviews
- Example
Letters
- Example
Speeches
- Example
Pamphlets
- Example
Personal narratives, British
- Example

Overview: Databases at William & Mary Libraries

There are a TON of databases at William & Mary, and the curated list below is just a fraction of all we have to offer.

Below is a curated list of Primary Source databases directly related to Britain covering the period 1939-Present.

They are organized by type of document, and each database has a description of scope & content. Use the descriptions to decide which database will most likely have material on your topic.

Tips for Primary Source Databases

Language has changed over last century, and it is often difficult to determine which words would have been used 50+ years ago.
Britain is a different country, their language is different, innit? Be careful with word selection when picking keywords.
Most primary source databases will have "thematic" filters to get you started. Before keyword searching, start there. See what curated documents come up. From those documents, see what terminology is being used by contemporaries.
Begin with basic searches and do not be too complicated. DO NOT USE TOO MANY TERMS AT ONCE
Be sure to use period-specific language.
Do NOT search a bunch of terms. This will give more, not less, false its.
Use the database limiting tools (publication date, place of publication, etc) to limit results. Do this instead of adding more search terms.
Use boolean (and or not) to make the best searches.

Newspapers

Illustrated London News, 1842-2003 This link opens in a new window
Online access to the entire run of the ILN from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003. Each page has been digitally reproduced in full color and every article and caption is full-text searchable with hit-term highlighting and links to corresponding illustrations.
Times Digital Archive (London Times, 1785-2019) This link opens in a new window
The world's newspaper of record. Includes entire newspaper, all articles, advertisements, and illustrations/photos. Fully searchable. Does NOT include the Sunday Times. Coverage: 1785-2019.
Guardian and The Observer This link opens in a new window
The Guardian (1821-2003) and its sister paper, The Observer (1791-2003) give readers online access to facts, firsthand accounts, and opinions of the day about the most significant and fascinating political, business, sports, literary, and entertainment events from the past two centuries. From Napoleons defeat at Waterloo to the Russian Revolution to Nelson Mandelas release from prison, these British historical newspapers bring history to life for researchers.
Picture Post Historical Archive (1938-1957) This link opens in a new window
Weekly newspaper published in Great Britain that defined the style of photojournalism in the 20th century. Complete and searchable. Coverage: 1938-1957.
Times of India: Historical Newspapers 1838-2010 This link opens in a new window
The world's most widely circulated English daily newspaper was founded in 1838 to serve British residents of West India. Today this historical newspaper serves researchers interested in studying colonialism and post-colonialism, British and world history, class and gender issues, international relations, comparative religion, international economics, terrorism, and more.

Online UK Newspapers (1940-2018) in the Main Catalog
Includes smaller regional papers, not just Times, Guardian, or Observer
Titles will need to be searched individually.

British Library Newspapers (1732-1950) This link opens in a new window
Sourced from the extensive holdings of the British Library, British Library Newspapers delivers a wide range of irreplaceable local and regional voices to reflect the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. These newspapers, emerging during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a crucial channel of information in towns and major cities, provide researchers with a unique, first-hand perspective on history. With more than 240 newspaper titles, the series is comprised of approximately 6.4 million pages of historic content, from articles to advertisements. This collection illuminates diverse and distinct regional attitudes, cultures, and vernaculars, providing an alternative viewpoint to the London-centric national press over a period of more than 200 years.
Sunday Times Historical Archive (1822-2016) This link opens in a new window
The Sunday Times launched in London on 20 October 1822, promising to instill "an invigorating spirit" in its readership, and to uphold the freedom of the press against those "emperors, kings, and their ministers" who would stifle it. Since that first issue, the newspaper has consistently provided thoughtful analysis and commentary on the week's news and society at large. Boasting some 3.5 million articles and more than 800,000 digitized pages, The Sunday Times Historical Archive is a gateway to the greatest crimes, careers, and culture of the last two centuries. This archive is an important resource for the humanities and social sciences, especially in history, media studies, journalism, literature, cultural studies, politics, and theater. The collection is also a valuable resource for family history and genealogy. Coverage: 1822-2016

Popular Magazines and Periodicals

Country Life Archive This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive archive (1897 to 2005) of the weekly British culture and lifestyle magazine, Country Life, focusing on fine art and architecture, the great country houses, and rural living.
Harper's Bazaar Archive (1867-) This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive, searchable archive of every page, advertisement, and cover of the Harper's Bazaar US and UK editions, from 1867 to the present. The issues are reproduced as high-resolution color page images and supported by fully searchable text and article-level indexing. This resource comprises a chronicle of American, British, and international fashion, culture, and society, supporting researchers by offering unique insights into the events, attitudes, and interests of the modern era.
Colonial Legacies: Empire and Commonwealth Periodicals This link opens in a new window
The backfiles of over 30 periodicals concerning the 20th-century history of the British Empire, decolonization, and the history and culture of former colonies. This archive offers a mixture of British publications about the empire and titles published in Commonwealth countries. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century to the 21st these publications encompass the key events in the empire's later phase and its post-independence legacies.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Offering comprehensive full-run coverage for popular periodicals, this growing resource will offer facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries, totaling almost five million pages.
Health & Fitness Magazine Archive (1950-2015) This link opens in a new window
The backfiles of consumer magazines devoted to health and fitness topics. With publications aimed at a male readership (e.g. Flex, Mens Health) and womens titles (e.g. Womens Health, Womens Health Activist), this collection supports research in topics such as the history of sex roles, body image, fitness/exercise, public health, food/nutrition, and medicine. The backfile of Prevention (from 1950) offers over six decades of content reflecting contemporary developments in these areas. Coverage: 1950 - 2015
Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals: Historical Newspapers 1845-2015 This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Leftist Newspapers and periodicals is a collection of English-language publications spanning beyond the 20th century (1845-2015) covering Communist, Socialist and Marxist thought, theory and practice. Issues covered include workers rights, organized labor, labor strikes, Nazi atrocities, McCarthyisms rise after WWII, Civil Rights, and modern-day class struggles which give rise to renewed interest in alternative social organizations. This collection includes 145 titles with over 150,000 digitized pages.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
A searchable archive of ~20 leading women's interest magazines, dating from the 19th century through to the 21st, including Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, and Town & Country. Subject coverage includes consumer culture, economics/marketing, family life, fashion, gender studies, health and fitness, home/interior design, popular culture, and social history. This database provides access to the complete archives of several 19th and 20th-century women's magazines. Coverage: 1883-2005.
LGBT Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Archival runs of 26 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests, in the United States and United Kingdom, including the important magazine, The Advocate (1967-). The database chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community. Some publications may contain explicit content. Coverage: 1954-2015.

Popular Culture Miscellanea

Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 This link opens in a new window
This resource contains digitizations of popular culture collections from the U.S. and U.K. between 1950 to 1975. These original archival materials are from various libraries and archives. Topics include student protests, civil rights, consumerism, and the Vietnam War. The collection includes pamphlets, letters, government files, eye witness accounts, underground magazines, visual and video materials and ephemera and memorabilia. Part II contains additional material, such as music, press kits, mail order catalogues, advertising proofs, additional photos from the Mirrorpix archives, and documents on student unrest and the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the National Archives.
Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive (1902-2014) This link opens in a new window
Weekly literature review published in London. Complete facsimile edition, fully searchable. Book reviews, arts reviews, poems, letters, and commentary pieces. Coverage: 1902-2014.

Maps: A vision of Britain from 1801 to now. Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions
A Vision of Britain through Time brings together historical surveys of Britain to create a record of how the country and its localities have changed.

It was created by Humphrey Southall and the Great Britain Historical GIS Project ("GIS" stands for "Geographical Information System"). We are based in the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth.

Provides Historic Maps of places in the UK

Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
A unique fully-searchable collection, Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 brings together approximately 1.5 million pages of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Rare and unique content from microfilm, newsletters, organizational papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other types of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more. Also includes "Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century," though the majority of the database's coverage is 1940s-1980s.

Human Experiences: Oral histories, diaries, journals, interviews, letters

Mass Observation Project 1981-2009 This link opens in a new window
Launched in 1981 by the University of Sussex as a rebirth of the original 1937 Mass Observation, its founders' aim was to document the social history of Britain by recruiting volunteers to write about their lives and opinions. This collection consists of the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation in the 1980s and 1990s and the thousands of responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diariesincludes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years. Each source has been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database. Coverage: 1500-1950
Women in The National Archives This link opens in a new window
The original primary source documents cover the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928 and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962. The addition of four significant HO 45 files on the suffrage question plus an extended chronology further enhance the collection.
Archives Direct
African Diaspora, 1860-Present This link opens in a new window
Essential for understanding Black history and culture, African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents.

British Library Oral History
The oral history collections at the British Library cover a wide range of subject areas. The interviews made available here are only a small selection from the many thousands held in the British Library. Visit the Oral History section on our website for an overview of the collections and search for all British Library oral history recordings using the online Sound and Moving Image Catalogue.
BBC's WW2 People's War Website (archived)
"The BBC's WW2 People's War project ran from June 2003 to January 2006. The aim of the project was to collect the memories of people who had lived and fought during World War Two on a website; these would form the basis of a digital archive which would provide a learning resource for future generations. The target audience, people who could remember the war, was at least 60 years old. Anyone who had served in the armed forces during the war was, at the start of the project, at least 75. Most of them had no experience of the internet. Yet over the course of the project, over 47,000 stories and 14,000 images were gathered. A national story gathering campaign was launched, where 'associate centres' such as libraries, museums and learning centres, ran events to helped gather stories. Many hundereds of volunteers, many attached to local BBC radio stations, assisted in this. Read more about how the stories were gathered. The resulting archive houses all of these memories. These stories don't give a precise overview of the war, or an accurate list of dates and events; they are a record of how a generation remembered the war, 60 years of more after the events, and remain in the Archive as they were contributed. The Archive is not a historical record of events, a collection of government or BBC information, recordings or documents relating to the war."

Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new window
This resource offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. Explore original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation, as well as printed publications, photographs and interactive features.

Film, Theatre, Television, Radio, Music

Socialism on Film This link opens in a new window
This collection of films from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture and society as seen through the socialist lens. It spans most of the twentieth century and covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain and Cuba.

List of British DVDs owned by WM Libraries
Use the subject option to narrow your results
British Library Popular Music
Includes, Jazz, Radio, and Recordings
British Library, Arts, literature & performance
Includes Art, Photography, and Arts Interviews

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
An archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the early twentieth-century era of vaudeville (1920s) and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are all included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews.

British Pathe
"British Pathé is considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world. Spanning the years from 1896-1978, its collections include footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, science, and culture. It is an invaluable resource for broadcasters, documentary producers, museum curators, and researchers worldwide. The entire archive of 85,000 films is available to view for free on the British Pathé website while licences can be acquired for other uses."

Government and Empire/Commonwealth Materials

Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 This link opens in a new window
Complete volumes of all British Government Confidential Print for Africa, from the Colonial, Dominion, Foreign and War Offices.
Archives Direct
Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 This link opens in a new window
Complete runs of all British Government Confidential Print volumes relating to the nations of South and Central America.
Archives Direct
Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 This link opens in a new window
Complete volumes of all British Colonial Office and Foreign Office Confidential Print for the Middle East.
Archives Direct
Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961 This link opens in a new window
Explore documents covering a broad sweep of history from c1824-1961, taking in the USA, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America.
Archives Direct
Documents on British Policy Overseas This link opens in a new window
Provides users with access to a wide range of primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, shedding light on throughout the twentieth century. Selected and edited by the official historians of the FCO, Documents on British Policy Overseas includes many documents specifically de-classified for inclusion in the series.
Includes: British Documents On The Origins Of The War 1898-1914 ; Collected Diplomatic Documents Relating To The Outbreak Of The European War (1915) ; Documents On British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 ; Documents On British Policy Overseas
Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980 This link opens in a new window
Featuring diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, political pamphlets, reports of court cases and other materials, this collection represents a constant exchange of information between London and the British embassies and consulates. Due to the unique nature of the relationship between Britain and China, these formerly restricted first-hand accounts provide unprecedented levels of detail into a turbulent period in Chinese history.
Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963 This link opens in a new window
This digital collection casts new light on Britain's relationship with the EEC, Anglo-American ties, the Cold War, Decolonisation, and issues of Public and Political Morality. Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963 provides complete coverage of the Cabinet conclusions (minutes) and memoranda of Harold Macmillans government, plus selected minutes and memoranda of policy committees.
U.K. Parliamentary Papers (1715 to Present) This link opens in a new window
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) includes the complete file of House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, also known as Sessional Papers or Blue Books, dating from 1715 through to today. Also, ProQuest has partnered with the National Library of Scotland to create the very first digitised collection of 19th Century House of Lords Parliamentary Papers, providing online access to previously unseen and valuable historical documents.

Hansard Parliamentary Debates
The official report of all Parliamentary debates. Find Members, their contributions, debates, petitions and divisions from published Hansard reports dating back over 200 years. Daily debates from Hansard are published on this website the next working day.

Arab-Israeli Relations 1917-1970 Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Arab-Israeli Relations 1917-1970offers the widest range of original source material from the British Foreign Office, Colonial Office, War Office and Cabinet Papers from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the Black September war of 1970-1. Here major policy statements are set out in their fullest context, the minor documents and marginalia revealing the workings of colonial administration and, following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, British diplomacy towards Israel and the Arab states. Additional value has been by the expansion from the original 562 National Archives records to over 17,000, thus substantially improving access to over 138,000 pages documenting the politics, administration, wars and diplomacy of the Palestine Mandate, the Independence of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Creation of Israel: British Foreign Office Correspondence on Palestine and Transjordan, 1940-1948 (History Vault) This link opens in a new window
The British Foreign Office Political Correspondence files on Palestine and Transjordan, 1940-1948 are essential for understanding the modern history of the Middle East, the establishment of Israel as a sovereign state, and the wider web of postwar international world politics. Early records in the collection focus on events in Palestine, Britains policy toward Palestine, and how the situation in Palestine affected relations with other nations.
International Relations and Military Conflicts (History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Collections in the International Relations and Military Conflicts category span from 1911-1975, offering a detailed view of U.S. foreign relations during the period from the years immediately before the outbreak of World War I through to the end of the Vietnam War. While these modules provide an excellent view of U.S. international relations during these important years, these records also offer detailed information on the countries in which the U.S. diplomatic or military officials were stationed. As such, the collections in the International Relations and Military Conflicts category are an excellent source for studies of individual countries or regions of the world. In addition, U.S. diplomats and military officials often reported back on international reaction to events in the United States, thereby providing an international perspective on important developments in the United States. This category also now includes British Foreign Office Records on World War I and the creation of Israel from 1940-1948.

legislation.gov.uk
This website is managed by The National Archives on behalf of HM Government. Publishing all UK legislation is a core part of the remit of the Keeper of Public Records (in his capacity as the King’s Printer of Acts of Parliament and Government Printer of Northern Ireland) and the King’s Printer for Scotland.