The upload stage of Edinburgh’s Their Finest Hour project has begun! After collecting over fifty testimonies, and thousands of photographs of WW2-related objects at the collection day, we are now working through the stories and photos, and uploading them to Oxford’s online archive that will launch in June.

While we do this, we’re keeping a keen eye on any findings that can be included in an Open Educational Resource that we’re developing. The resource, that will be able to be used in Scottish schools, centers around social-driven ‘history from below’: the type of history that we have ‘collected’ through Their Finest Hour. It is crucial that our study of events like World War Two , that ripped through the whole nation, doesn’t focus solely on the perspective of the political and military decision-makers. Studying history from an alternative perspective, like the experience of ‘ordinary families’ across the UK, has historical value in aiding an understanding of the totality of the War’s impact.

So, we are currently developing an OER than blends the broader approach to ‘doing’ history from below with the specific WW2 focus of Their Finest Hour, and also hope to bring in students’ own experience of commonly memorable events.