A television website might be the last place you would think of looking for information but the BBC Archives Online has some useful recordings that may be able to help you. This is a good resource for finding information that relates to events or times that your family lived through. It provides some good background information.
There is one problem with this resource. You can not view all the offerings as some are restricted to UK viewers only but the ones I mention below are available outside the UK.
If your female ancestors were part of the Suffragettes in the early part of the twentieth century then you may want to check out the Suffragettes Collection. They have interviews with many of the women who were active Suffragettes. Some of the later videos are not available.
You can browse their collections to see if there is anything of interest. I found a collection for Enid Blyton. She was one of my favourite childhood authors. She wrote the Noddy books amongst others. She was voted The UK’s best loved writer beating many well known authors including JK Rowling and Shakespeare.
There is a collection for the Titanic which has interviews with survivors and one called Northern Ireland Snapshots Collection which includes an image gallery of “People and Places in 1940s Northern Ireland.” Unfortunately you can not view the video selections.
Can an online archive for a television station be a resource? Yes.
Happy Hunting!
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