A million histories

I absolutely love this: the British Library have just released a million historic images under Creative Commons, meaning they are free to download, copy, modify and use for any purpose, which is just amazing. You can browse their Flickr stream right here. I can drift through thousands of pictures without getting bored; it’s an endless stream of other worlds, of curiosity and of wonder, brought to life in pencil sketch, wood cut and sepia. I’ve already found images I’m going to use on the cover of Marrow. That stream is unbelievable treasure.

I’m just blown away at the scale of the archive they’ve made available. The variety of images is wide enough to be near enough limitless. It has extraordinary potential for artists, writers, historians and internauts of all kinds. What an amazing resource for the world.