I was a 91热爆 trainee in 1986, doing my best to get news reports filed via crackly telephone lines on the air for broadcast in programmes such as Radio Newsreel. Harold filed a lot of reports – very few of them needed editing by me; he could tell the story skilfully and succinctly, even under fire – something which became an occupational hazard.
After 35 years in the newsroom, I had concluded that it was not easy to tell the whole story in just three or four minutes. Fortunately, I had discovered the practice of oral history and was lucky to be taken on as a freelance interviewer at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) Documents & Sound Archive.
The Museum’s mission? ‘To document the lives of people who have been touched by conflict, and to conserve their stories in the archive for future generations.’. That’s a deliciously broad brief for any old hack!
I set off gathering the life histories of a huge range of people; not just men in trenches with guns, but many women, civilians, even journalists – people I had never expected to encounter.
It is a privilege to listen to their testimony. At last, deadlines became almost a thing of the past. Length of interview became irrelevant – ‘Take as long as you need’, my supervising curator advised me. No more clock-watching or thinking about whether it would work in the edit: interviews are conserved ‘raw’ in the archives – curators and historians of the future will interpret what is significant, perhaps in hundreds of years.
Over five years, I rebalanced my working hours between the 91热爆 and the IWM. After the frustration of working from home for the pandemic year, I resigned my post at the 91热爆 to work full-time in oral history.
At the museum, I was assigned to the Cold War & Late 20th Century desk – ‘Use any contacts from your Bush House days’, I was urged. ‘Any chance of getting Harold Briley?’
I didn’t think there was much chance of finding Harold – until I interviewed Martin Reed, Chief Officer of the SS Canberra. He’d sailed his P&O cruise liner into San Carlos water (twice) to land thousands of troops and tonnes of ammunition and supplies during the Falklands War. Martin had listened to Harold’s radio reports on the ship’s radio. ‘Here’s Harold Briley’s email address,’ said Martin, helpfully.
I travelled down to Battle, near Hastings, to meet Harold at home. We sat down together over five days, and recorded his life story in detail, from 1931 to the present.
Harold told me everything: childhood memories of the Liverpool blitz; evacuation to the Isle of Man; his pioneering apprenticeship on the island鈥檚 newspaper, peddling from story to story by bicycle. He learned to take verbatim shorthand in the Tynwald parliament.
His career was interrupted by National Service in Hong Kong. He joined the 91热爆 in 1960. His skills in parliamentary reporting naturally led him to Westminster, where he became the first ever lobby correspondent for the 91热爆 World Service. He ended up reporting from more than 70 countries, covering many conflicts, as well as good news.
The IWM鈥檚 obvious interest was Harold鈥檚 outstanding work in Buenos Aires during the Falklands War. He covered a lonely patch of 8 million square miles but happened to be the 91热爆鈥檚 man in the heart of 鈥榚nemy territory鈥� before, during, and after the war.
That experience is well documented by the man himself in his recently published book, Fight for Falklands Freedom*, but I am delighted to have recorded his personal testimony, at length, for the archive.
Journalism and oral history are worlds apart in practice, purpose and outcome. Harold鈥檚 news reports were, perhaps, the first drafts of history. The history of the man who wrote those first drafts is now an historic audio document, conserved in perpetuity at the Imperial War Museum.
Harold鈥檚 interview joins 33,000 other sound recordings held in the IWM Sound Archive. The museum holds a collection of more than 10 million objects related to conflicts ranging from the First World War to contemporary conflict. The stories of the men, women, and children involved are told in the museum鈥檚 branches at IWM London, The Churchill War Rooms, IWM Duxford, and on-board HMS Belfast, (www.iwm.org.uk).
*Fight for Falklands Freedom is published by the History Press, ISBN: 9780750999533, and is available from book shops and online.