I've long been interested in the influence Quakers had on youth hostels. Quakers gave youth hostels an ethos of simplicity and companionship that endured for years and, more tangibly, they ran regions and brought many properties to the infant YHA. In his memoirs Charles Allen, first regional secretary in Devon and Cornwall, wrote that it... Continue Reading →

  The YHA Archive has recently acquired a very special item – a spiral bound typewritten personal memoir of Charles Allen, one of the pioneer organisers of the YHA in Devon and Cornwall from the 1930s to the 1960s. John Martin, YHA's Honorary Archivist, writes that it dates from the late 1970s. Charles Allen, was... Continue Reading →

May was an exciting and productive month for John Martin, YHA's honorary archivist. John writes about YHA's archive and its latest acquisitions and boxes and boxes of old records from the Lake District in this report. He came back from a recent trip to the Lake District laden with old files of fascinating material and... Continue Reading →

A letter from Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Party prime minister, turned up in old papers this week. The pages on which it was written are stiff, thick and yellow with age. An old fashioned treasury tag holds the typewritten pages together, and the paper smells faintly of decay. It slipped from a bundle of... Continue Reading →

A sunny Saturday afternoon in April and the FA cup is into semi finals. When I get off the bus, football supporters are making a racket outside Liverpool Street station. They're either Spurs or Chelsea supporters, I have no idea which, and either way passers by are scurrying, trying not to be intimidated. I haven't... Continue Reading →