Our History

Eric plus

Ray interviewing Eric and Ernie in 1978

St Albans & District Talking Newspaper has been bringing the local news to visually impaired listeners since 1974.

That was when two St Albans residents (Ray and Meg Bousfield) decided to help those who could no longer read the local paper but wanted to keep in contact with their community.

So they launched what became one of the first Talking Newspapers anywhere in the UK.

They began with a tape recorder and microphone on a kitchen table in Beechwood Avenue and with an audience of one.  That soon became two, then ten, then twenty ……

And the rest is history.

Over the past four decades we’ve moved from a kitchen table to a purpose-built sound proof studio, from open-reel tape to digitised recording, from cassette tapes to memory sticks.

But the aim is the same as it was right at the start.

St Albans Talking Newspaper