Life stories and oral history
The Museum of London has been collecting the memories of Londoners since the 1980s. The museum’s oral history collection now contains more than 5,000 hours of recorded life story interviews with a wide variety of people talking about their lives and everyday experiences.
London calling
Through its ongoing oral history collection, the museum is building up a detailed picture of what it was like to be a Londoner during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Interviews were recorded as part of the museum’s ongoing oral history collecting programme, and for particular museum projects.
Major projects undertaken include The Peopling of London, focusing on immigration and London's multicultural character.
There are also 200 interviews about working life recorded during the 1980s. These largely cover trade and manufacturing, with particular focus on London’s docks.
London history workshop
This collection holds 3,000 hours of taped interviews recorded by the London History Workshop Centre between 1982 and 1990. These include interviews by famous history workshop historians such as Raphael Samuel and Jerry White. The collection also includes all the audio interviews made by London Weekend Television for its series, The Making of Modern London.
