Manchester Oral History: Alec Greenhalgh Interviews

This is a collection of oral history interviews conducted in 1988-1989 by Alec Greenhalgh, journalist and broadcaster, mainly with people from Saddleworth. The interviews are mostly with people who were born between the 1890s and the 1920s and they concentrate on childhood experiences, including family life and village life.

The full length interviews are available in the Archives+ search room at Manchester Central Library. The British Library collection reference is UAP001. The local reference is MANOH.

Alec Greenhalgh interviews

Jingle recorded at Strawberry Recording Studios in early 1974 for the launch of Piccadilly Radio in Manchester in April 1974.

Paul & Linda - Hello Piccadilly Jingle (Strawberry)

Demo Tapes is a protest music project inspired by the NW region's sound archives. Young musicians at More Music, Collective Encounters and Brighter Sound listened to newly-digitised sound archives and wrote new music in response to the archives. This podcast takes you behind the scenes from the first workshops to the final gig. Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Demo Tapes (Behind The Scenes) 10th September 2021

“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” 
 (Don Draper, Mad Men)

Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slideshow of the mind’s eye - projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listeners’ mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism.

Each episode is based on a found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the 60s and 70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from my own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that I have collected over the past twenty years.

Scotland, 1971

A documentary about World War Two's finest British poet, Keith Douglas, who was killed in action with the Sherwood Rangers in Normandy three days after the D-Day landings.
Presented by Sean Street, with contributions from Anne Stevenson, Desmond Graham, Stuart Hills, Tim Kendall, JC Hall and voices from the BBC Sound Archive.

"an unsentimental and challenging portrait and The padre who buried him spoke, as did poets, his biographer and people who knew him. In parallel, we received a first-rate analysis of his verse, how it changed after desert combat, loosening in structure, tightening its impact." - Daily Telegraph

First broadcast 1st January 2004 BBC Radio 3
Presented by Sean Street
Produced by Alan Hall

Landscape With Figure

It wasn’t only people that were evacuated from London during the Second World War. Antiquities and works of art were moved outside of the capital in their thousands. Relocated to stately houses, abandoned tube stations and purpose-built, climate-controlled bunkers – this is the story of how the British Museum pulled off ‘the biggest, mass evacuation of objects in any museum’s history.’

Music: 'Flashing Swords'&nbsp;– Cats on the Beach: http://www.catsonthebeach.net/
© Cats on the Beach 2015

'Tech Toys'&nbsp;– Lee Rosevere: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere
© Lee Rosevere 2015
Used and adapted under Attribution License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Suicide Exhibition (part 1)

A private eye, a jockey, a hotel piano player....voices from The Working Tapes.

In the early 1970's, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs for his book, "Working."  It was a surprise bestseller. But until now, few of these interviews have ever been heard before. For decades, the reel-to-reel tapes were packed away in Terkel’s home office. Over the past year, Radio Diaries, along with Project&, combed through them to produce this series.

Radio Diaries

#57: The Working Tapes - Part 3

Interview with Minnie Johnson, then living on Furnhill Gipsy Site in Harlow (SA 24/1925/1). Minnie was born in 1927 and got married in 1951. They had four children together. The interview was conducted by Sue Cubbin from the Essex Sound and Video Archive and Sheila Clarke from Essex County Council Planning Service. The recording was digitised from an audio cassette tape.

Read more about the recording on Essex Archives Online: http://seax.essexcc.gov.uk/result_details.aspx?ThisRecordsOffSet=1&id=457645 

Image shows family in caravan en route to Cahirmee Horse Fair at Buttevant, Co. Cork, Ireland in 1954. Image from the National Library of Ireland (Ref WIL m12[54]).

View our Takedown Policy here:
http://www.essexsounds.org.uk/content/about/legal-and-technical/takedown-policy 

The Essex Record Office can preserve your old recordings, or provide talks and training on oral history and sound archives. To find out more about the services we offer, visit our website: http://www.essexrecordoffice.co.uk/services/sound-video-services/

Learning to read; household chores; family history and husband's family (SA 24/1925/1 Side A Part 2)

One week into his Presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump says it will be, "an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall."

But campaign slogans are easy. Reality is harder.

In this episode, two stories about that border. And what happens when, instead of people crossing the border, the border crosses the people.

#62: The Border Wall (Updated)

An oral history interview conducted as part of the LGBT Foundation's 'Let's Talk About Sex' project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

Marc talks about his time in the army and volunteering work at the Basement sauna in Manchester.

Marc Robinson

Alec Greenhalgh interviews an elderly Greenfield woman who remembers the doll she was given as a child.

This extract is from an interview in which the anonymous woman describes her childhood moving between relatively isolated Pennine villages (1898-1914). She recalls details about her school days, family and her working life, as well as traditions and customs.

This interview is part of a collection of interviews conducted in 1988-1989 by Alec Greenhalgh, journalist and broadcaster, with people across Greater Manchester on childhood, school and early life.

Reference number: MANOH/02

Date of interview: 1988

Copyright: North West Sound Archive

Digitised in 2019 by Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH), funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Childhood toys

It was just a single line in an inauguration speech given 50 years ago. But Alabama Governor George Wallace’s ‘Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever’ is remembered as one of the most vehement rallying cries against racial equality in American history.

The year was 1963. Civil rights activists were fighting for equal access to schools and the voting booth, and the federal government was preparing to intervene in many southern states. In Montgomery, Alabama, newly elected governor George Wallace stepped up to a podium to deliver his inaugural address.

On the speech's fiftieth anniversary, Radio Diaries looks back at the story behind those famous words, and the man who delivered them.

Segregation Now, Segregation Forever: The Infamous Words of George Wallace

Frank Allsopp reads 'The Messiah'. This is a short extract from a life story interview.

This interview is part of a collection of interviews conducted in 1988-1989 by Alec Greenhalgh, journalist and broadcaster, with people across Greater Manchester on childhood, school and early life.

Reference number: MANOH/46

Date of interview: 1989

Copyright: North West Sound Archive

Digitised in 2019 by Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH), funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

'The Messiah' read by Frank Allsop

Frank Allsopp reads 'Ode to Standedge Bull' by Becket Whitehead. This is a short extract from a life story interview.

This interview is part of a collection of interviews conducted in 1988-1989 by Alec Greenhalgh, journalist and broadcaster, with people across Greater Manchester on childhood, school and early life.

Reference number: MANOH/46

Date of interview: 1989

Copyright: North West Sound Archive

Digitised in 2019 by Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH), funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Frank Allsopp reads 'Ode to Standedge Bull'

Alec Greenhalgh interviews Hilda Gibbs who remembers going for rides in a sidecar on her father's motorbike. She describes the open fields in south Manchester and watching biplanes at the aerodrome.

This extract is from an interview in which Hilda remembers her childhood in Hulme, Manchester (1911-1926). She talks about family life and the deaths of her parents. Housing and furnishings, along with hygiene are mentioned. She recalls WWI and the flu epidemic. Leisure time and entertainment also feature.

This interview is part of a collection of interviews conducted in 1988-1989 by Alec Greenhalgh, journalist and broadcaster, with people across Greater Manchester on childhood, school and early life.

Reference number: MANOH/15

Date of interview: 1989

Copyright: North West Sound Archive

Digitised in 2019 by Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH), funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Full interview available at Manchester Central Library

Rural south Manchester by motorbike!

The Greater Manchester Sound Archive is available at Manchester Central Library. The collection includes hundreds of oral histories, radio and music recordings.

You can check the catalogue at http://gmlives.org.uk. If you can't find what you're looking for in the catalogue please email us on archiveslocalstudies@manchester.gov.uk.

Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) is an ambitious partnership project led by the British Library and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to address the threat facing the UK’s sound heritage. Sounds held on physical formats risk being lost as the carriers degrade over time and the equipment to play them is no longer produced. The project aims to transform access to and preserve the nation’s sound heritage, to create sustainable centres of excellence in digital audio preservation and to involve new audiences in engaging with their audio heritage in innovative ways.

Archives+ at Manchester Central Library is the hub partner for the North West region, which covers Cumbria, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The hub will digitise around 15,000 recordings on 5,000 cassette and open reels held all over the region. The British Library will archive the digital files and provide access to a proportion of them online. The project will recruit volunteers across the region who will spend time learning how to sort, catalogue and promote the region's sound heritage.

We recognise that from time to time material published online may be in breach of copyright laws, contain sensitive personal data, or include content that may be regarded as obscene or defamatory.  If you are concerned that you have found material on our Soundcloud for which you have not given permission, contravenes privacy laws, is obscene or defamatory, or in terms of copyright law is not covered by a limitation or exception, please contact us at archiveslocalstudies@manchester.gov.uk.

Childhood toys

Archives+

Related tracks