The Jerome Kuehl Archive

The Jerome Kuehl archive contains a large series of off-air recordings and books and journals in English, French and German on the topics of film history, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, documentary, television and world history. For more information on the collection, please contact President of the International Association for Media and History ciara.chambers@ucc.ie

The Jerome Kuehl collection contains VHS tapes, books and journals belonging to television producer and historian Jerome (Jerry) Kuehl (1931-2018), who worked on landmark series such as  The Great War (BBC, 1964), The World at War (Thames Television, 1973-74) and Cold War (Turner Productions, 1998). A fluent French speaker, Jerry also worked for the NBC European Production Unit in Paris where he organised coverage of the 1968 ‘Evenements’ and produced a 4-part series La Grande Aventure de la Presse Filmée for France 3. He worked with Sebastian Cody, head of production company Open Media, on a radical discussion format for the new Channel 4 in 1987. The programme, After Dark, which was transmitted live and late at night, with no fixed end time, centred on a group of intellectuals and experts sitting on sofas discussing the topic of the week. There were 90 episodes  produced over the following four years. Jerry was Head of General Studies at the National Film School from 1979 to 1981.

Jerry had a particular interest in the misuse of archival material in television production and detailed many of his critiques in his Office Cat series for the Historical Journal of Film Radio Television, the FOCAL magazine and the International Association for Media and History blog; he was a IAMHIST council member for many years. He was regularly consulted by television producers and researchers for his keen eye and ability to spot misappropriation or inaccurate positioning of footage. He often wrote articles and gave lectures on the topic, using his own television experience for contextual exploration of the appropriate way to illustrate history using the archive.