University of Oxford project aims to preserve stories and memories of the Second World War
Millions of us in Britain and across the world have treasured stories and objects that have been
passed down to us by our parents, grandparents and other family members who lived through the
Second World War.
Unfortunately, these wartime stories and objects are inevitably in danger of
being lost as people move house, declutter, pass away, and simply forget.
Their Finest Hour (theirfinesthour.org) is a University of Oxford project that aims to collect and
digitally archive as many of these stories and objects as possible before they are lost to history.
You can help the project in three ways:
1) By organising a Digital Collection Day in your local community. Digital Collection Days are
typically one-day events where members of the public can bring along war-related stories,
memories, photographs, diaries, letters and any other mementos to be digitised (i.e.
photographed) and uploaded to a free-to-access online archive.
2) By attending a Digital Collection Day in your area (see our ‘Events’ page for more details).
3) By submitting WW2 stories and photos of objects directly to our archive from the comfort of
their own home.
We are doing this now because the stories and objects of the men, women, and children who were
part of the 1939-1945 generation are being lost.
Very few families in the British Empire and the Commonwealth were untouched by the war. In what was a truly global conflict, over 8.5 million
people from the Empire and Dominions served in all major theatres of the war.
Many of those affected have since passed their stories and objects onto their children, grandchildren and great-
grandchildren, all of whom now act as custodians of their relatives’ remarkable legacy.
We are interested in collecting all WW2-related stories and objects, from the extraordinary to the
seemingly ‘ordinary’.
We want our archive to reflect the diverse experiences of all those affected by the war: men and
women across the British Empire and the Commonwealth who worked in industry, on the land, or in
other roles; ran households and fought a daily battle of rationing; served in or supported the armed
forces; and even those who refused to go to war for political or religious reasons.
We are also interested in preserving children’s experiences of the war and would like to hear about any relatives
who refused to talk about their wartime experience.
All digitised stories and objects will be free to access via our website from 6 June 2024, the 80 th
anniversary of D-Day.
For further information, please visit www.theirfinesthour.org or email theirfinesthour@ell.ox.ac.uk
