The National Gallery in London first opened its doors to the public on 10 May 1824. Take a peek behind the scenes by watching architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and the Gallery’s first Associate Artist, Paula Rego, share their Gallery experiences in a series of enthralling recordings
The National Gallery was created when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1823, and it now houses more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 including works by Raphael, Titian and Da Vinci. more...

Saturday 5 May marks the anniversary of philosopher Karl Marx's birth in 1818. To commemorate this date, why not watch the extraordinary Web of Stories recordings of Polish political activist Jacek Kuroń as he reminisces about his life, including his involvement with Marxism and communism.
Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) was born in Lvov (now Lviv, in Ukraine) and was a prominent Polish social and political figure, activist, educator and historian who helped transform Poland's political landscape. Considered by many to be the godfather of the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland, Kuroń attracted national attention in 1965 when he and Karol Modzelewski wrote their Open Letter to the Party, a Marxist analysis critiquing the Communist Party. He was imprisoned for three years and, following his release, he continued his opposition to the party and its policies and was imprisoned again in 1968 for his role in encouraging student protests against the government. Kuroń was later a co-founder of the Workers' Defence Committee and became a government Minister of Labour and Social Policy. more...

Monday 23 April marks the birth and death of William Shakespeare, so why not mark the date by watching the fascinating recordings of renowned theatre director Sir Peter Hall as he looks back over his remarkable career in British theatre and reminisces about his creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company?
Sir Peter Hall has directed more than 200 plays. He founded the Royal Shakespeare Company aged just 29 and directed the National Theatre for 15 years. In 1955, he directed the English language premiere of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and for years was regarded as the obvious director of Harold Pinter. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963, and in 1977 was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. In 1999, he was also honoured with a Laurence Olivier Award. more...

Friday 13 April marks the fourth anniversary of the death of John Wheeler, one of the world’s most influential physicists. Web of Stories was fortunate enough to capture Wheeler discussing his work in his own words and these fascinating clips can be seen on our website
John Wheeler was an American theoretical physicist who was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Despite his work with Niels Bohr in explaining the basic principles behind nuclear fission, Wheeler is best known for coining the term ‘black holes’ as well as for his mind-stretching theories and writings on time, space and gravity. For most of his career, Wheeler was a professor at Princeton University and was influential in mentoring a generation of physicists who made notable contributions to quantum mechanics and gravitation. more...

Nobel Prize winner James Watson celebrates his 84th birthday on 6 April and you can watch him discuss pivotal moments from his illustrious career, including one of the most celebrated scientific achievements of a generation, in a series of compelling in-depth recordings at Web of Stories.
American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist James Dewey Watson has enjoyed an impressive and far-reaching career but is best known for discovering the structure of DNA for which he was jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Author of many science books, including the bestselling The Double Helix (1968) and textbook The Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965), Watson spent time teaching at Harvard University before being associated with the National Institutes for Health and later, as director, president and then chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York where his work changed focus to concentrate on cancer. more...

As the exhibition ‘Jonas Mekas and Robert Polidori: Portraits’ gains critical acclaim at New York’s Edwynn Houk Gallery, watch Mekas tell the remarkable tales of his life and work in his own captivating words.
Born in Lithuania in 1922, Jonas Mekas has a fascinating story to tell. After escaping from a Nazi labour camp in 1945, he and his brother moved to New York in 1949 where, two weeks later, he acquired a Bolex camera and began the obsession with filming the details of his life. Best known for his work as a filmmaker, poet, philosopher and curator, Mekas is often referred to as ‘the godfather of American avant-garde cinema’. more...

To celebrate World Poetry Day on Wednesday 21 March, a day of recognition for the importance of poetry across the world, Web of Stories is releasing brand new recordings of Lithuanian award-winning poet Tomas Venclova reflecting on his writing and the spellbinding stories of his life
The first World Poetry Day took place on 21 March 2000, created by UNESCO to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry across the globe. To celebrate, watch the compelling recordings of Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian scholar, poet, author and translator of literature. more...

As a new portrait of scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock goes on display in the National Portrait Gallery, watch him recount, in enthralling detail, memories of his life’s work
Born in 1919, James Lovelock is a globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist. While his career has included work for NASA and MI5, he is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis. This ecological theory postulates that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth form a complex self-regulating entity that maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth and keep it healthy. more...

As Andrzej Wajda, Poland’s most prominent filmmaker, celebrates his birthday on Tuesday 6 March, learn more about his background and enthralling, award-winning work by watching him recount events from his fascinating life.
Born in 1926, Andrzej Wajda is an Academy Award-winning director, best known for his films The Promised Land (1975), Man of Iron (1981) and Katyn (2007). His films showed the horror of the German occupation of Poland, establishing Wajda’s reputation as a story-teller and commentator on Poland’s turbulent history. In addition to his impressive career in TV and film, he was elected as Senator of the Republic of Poland from 1989 to 1991. more...

Thursday 1 March marks the birthday of acclaimed American poet Richard Wilbur, so what better way to mark the occasion than to watch him recount the absorbing story of his life and prize-winning work?
Born in New York City on 1 March 1921, Richard Wilbur published his first book of poems, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, in 1947. Since then he has published many poetry collections, including New and Collected Poems (1988) and Things of This World (1956), both of which were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Wilbur also published several translations of French plays, specifically those of Molière and Jean Racine as well as poetry by Valéry, Villon, Baudelaire and others. He also created a musical version of Voltaire's Candide with Bernstein and Hellman which is still produced today. more...

Italian biologist Renato Dulbecco has died at his home in California aged 97. Joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1975 for furthering the understanding of cancer caused by viruses, Dulbecco had also created a vaccine using a mutant form of the polio virus and had played a significant role in initiating the Human Genome Project.
Born in Catanzaro in southern Italy, Renato Dulbecco showed an early interest and talent in mathematics and physics, but later decided to pursue a career in medicine. In 1936, Dulbecco was called up for army duty as a medical officer, and it was not until after World War II that he managed to move to the US with his friend Rita Levi-Montalcini where, with the help of Salvador Luria, he began to study bacteriophages. more...

Dolly the Sheep made headlines around the world when news broke that the first mammal had been successfully cloned. To mark the anniversary of her death on 14 February 2003, watch the late John Maynard Smith, renowned environmental biologist and geneticist, share his views on her creation and reflect on his highly influential career
When Dolly the Sheep was cloned from an adult somatic cell using the process of nuclear transfer, it was heralded as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of recent years. John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) admits he was perplexed by the news of her creation: ‘I'm genuinely puzzled by Dolly the sheep…I read the paper in Nature and…it convinced me that the phenomenon is a genuine one, and that's exciting, but it didn't offer any explanation of why it worked, because I would not have expected it to work, and most people in the trade would not.’ more...

To celebrate the birthday of the most famous biologist in history, Charles Darwin, on 12 February, visit the Web of Stories video recordings of the award-winning evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr who shares his thoughts on Darwin’s remarkable, world-changing theories
It’s widely thought that no other individual has influenced our knowledge of life on Earth as much as English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882). While his theory of evolution by natural selection has been modified over time, it is still accepted by the scientific community as the best, evidence-based explanation for how we came to exist. more...

On 31 January 1950 President Truman gave the order to create the hydrogen bomb. To mark the anniversary of this event, listen to physicist Edward Teller sharing, in his own words, the fascinating story of his part in its creation, which changed the world forever.
Edward Teller, the late Hungarian-American physicist, is famous for having helped to develop the atomic bomb and providing the theoretical framework for the hydrogen bomb. His long and, at times, controversial career spanned decades, leaving behind him a legacy, including contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy and surface physics, that remains relevant today. He was a staunch advocate of nuclear power and also of a strong defence policy, calling for the development of advanced thermonuclear weapons. more...

Anniversary of Ava Gardner's death: Web of Stories presents Billy Williams' recollections of working with the screen siren.
Relish a rare peek behind the scenes of Hollywood as Oscar-winning cinematographer Billy Williams shares his incredible experiences, including working with screen siren Ava Gardner. This week is the anniversary of American screen legend Ava Gardner’s death on 25 January 1990 and, to mark the occasion, why not visit Web of Stories to watch Oscar-winning cinematographer, Billy Williams sharing his experience of working with the Hollywood great? more...

Watch Quentin Blake tell his life story and how he started work on the As Large As Life exhibition at London's Foundling Museum at WebofStories.com
An exhibition entitled As Large as Life by Quentin Blake, the much loved illustrator of many of Roald Dahl’s books, has opened at London’s Foundling Museum. The exhibition shows 60 previously unseen works specially commissioned by four hospitals in the UK and in France. The series took five years to complete and coincides with the recent release of a commemorative collection of stamps depicting Blake's most famous illustrations used in the Roald Dahl classics. Anyone interested in learning more about Quentin Blake should visit the Web of Stories website at www.webofstories.com/quentin.blake, which contains video recordings of Blake telling his life story and talking about how he started work on this ambitious project. more...

On Tuesday 10th January, Donald Ervin Knuth, the American computing pioneer and author of the classic The Art of Computer Programming, celebrates his 74th birthday.
As with all Web of Stories contributors, the 7.5 hours of Knuth's recording are divided into a number of short stories of between two and ten minutes, with a fully searchable transcript. In one of the stories, Knuth talks about why he decided to write The Art of Computer Programming. more...

Thirty years ago on December 13 1981, martial law was declared in Poland. This drastic step, taken by the then Prime Minister General Wojciech Jaruzelski was intended to suppress political opposition and restore communist party control throughout the land. A shocked world watched as high-profile oppositionists, including Jacek Kuroń and Jan Józef Lipski, vanished in the crackdown.
The news that Poland was under martial law came after months of escalating social and economic unrest in that country. Although the ferment, particularly following the founding of the independent Solidarity trade union in August 1980, meant a response from the communist government was likely, the crackdown, when it came, surprised many. Outside observers had been focusing on the possibility of a Soviet invasion especially after Soviet armed forces had moved into Afghanistan two years earlier. This fear was shared by many Poles for whom the influence of the Kremlin on Poland’s domestic policy was frighteningly predictable. The CIA, however, concluded that at such a critical phase in the Cold War, Poland’s communist rulers would use martial law to deter Soviet invasion. In fact, what the communist leaders in both Warsaw and Moscow were intent on was the reassertion of control over society. more...

Monday 5th December marks the 110th birthday of the late Walter Elias 'Walt' Disney, the American film producer, animator and co-founder of the Walt Disney Company.
In 1938, Jules Engel was asked by Walt Disney to work with them on what became the much-loved Disney classic, Fantasia. He was appointed the task of storyboarding the final dance sequences of the Russian sprites and Chinese mushrooms to the music of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Engel's passion for dance and art made him the perfect candidate to choreograph the sequences. Although much controversy still surrounds the fact that Jules Engel was never credited for his work on these sequences, here he describes what it was like working for the Walt Disney Company and meeting Walt Disney himself. more...

Greenwood and Earnshaw’s Chemistry of the Elements has today been translated into several European and Asian languages, and is widely regarded around the world as being one of the most influential chemistry bibles of our time.
Norman Greenwood was born in Australia in 1925 and graduated from Melbourne University before going to Cambridge. His wide-ranging researches in inorganic and structural chemistry have made major advances in the chemistry of boron hydrides and other main-group element compounds. He also pioneered the application of Mössbauer spectroscopy to problems in chemistry. He is a prolific writer and inspirational lecturer on chemical and educational themes, and has held numerous visiting professorships throughout the world. more...

Alice Herz-Sommer, the renowned Czech pianist and the oldest known survivor of the Holocaust and the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp, celebrates her 108th birthday this weekend.
Theresienstadt opened on 24th November 1941 and operated for three-and-a-half years, serving as a transit camp for Czech Jews who were artistically and culturally talented. It was used in a propaganda function as a 'show camp' for the Germans to justify to the rest of the world the deportation or resettlement of Jews from Germany to the east. In reality, it served as a ghetto, a concentration camp and a holding bank for Jews before their deportation to killing centres in Eastern Europe. Now, 70 years later, it retains its reputation as a place in which many gifted writers, musicians, academics and actors were incarcerated and forced to give performances and lectures in an effort to create an impression of normality to the rest of the world, and although teaching was banned, many children were taught by these exceptionally talented individuals. Over 90 per cent of these children, however, were later murdered in death camps. more...

Web of Stories is delighted to announce the availability of a unique series of videos of Sir Ken Adam talking candidly about his life and career from childhood to the present day.
Sir Ken Adam pioneered the art of production design and created some of the world's most celebrated and iconic sets which include the war room of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and, in 1977, the supertanker set of The Spy Who Loved Me, which became the largest sound set the world had ever seen. Sir Ken Adam paved the way for British and international cinematic design, and has set the standard with a career spanning seven decades. His work on over 75 films has won him a Lifetime Achievement Award, two BAFTAs, two Academy Awards and in 2003 the honour of being knighted by the Queen for his services to the film industry. more...