The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) is a monopoly. No other organisation exists that has scanned and made available thousands of historic British newspapers (though they don’t have access to The Times). Before BNA, the main way of looking at newspapers was to go to local libraries and archives, who might hold the actual newspapers or have them on microfilm. Alternatively, it meant a trip to the British Library, whose newspaper library was based at Colindale in north London, with miles of shelving of newspapers and thousands of reels of microfilm. In 2010 the British Library agreed to partner with Brightsolid, a subsidiary of D C Thomson, to digitise their newspapers, and in 2011 the BNA website went live, a joint enterprise between the British Library and the family history website Find My Past (FMP), also owned by D C Thomson. BNA continues to scan and digitise newspapers.

On 28th July 2026, the British Newspaper Archive was deliberately wrecked. Continue reading →