The Story of British Pathe

For more than half a century, the film and newsreel company British Pathé documented almost every aspect of everyday life in Britain and around the world.

The company's output really came into its own during the Second World War, when the distinctively clipped and relentlessly chipper commentaries by its announcer Bob Danvers-Walker provided stirring encouragement during the Blitz - and offered authoritative advice on how housewives struggling to feed their families on the ration could overcome privation and to 'make do and mend'.

While the company was famous for its pioneering news reports, it also produced immensely popular 'cinemagazines', which entertained cinemagoers for decades.

In the age before mass tourism made international travel affordable and accessible to most of us, their sumptuous travelogues and anthropological documentaries offered British cinemagoers a rare opportunity to glimpse faraway worlds.