TNA Army and Royal Navy Podcasts

The UK National Archives has two new additions to its podcasts taken from recent talks with a genealogy orientation given at Kew.

On May 27 Mark Pearsall presented an level introductory talk about Royal Navy service records from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. The first half treats officers, both commissioned and warrant, and the remainder ratings.

On June 3 William Spencer, author of Army Service Records of the First World War , discussed the service records of army officers and other ranks. It covers the period from 1760 to 1913, although as he points out, soldiers from pre-WW1 may have also served then, even into their 50s, and have records amongst surviving WW1 files.

Both presentations refer to the helpful information on the TNA website found in the left hand side column under Military History.

These full length presentations are clearly recorded and informative. Both would benefit if the accompanying slides were also available -- not a major technological challenge these days.