Gaumont-British Instructional

In this dramatized warning to young women of the risks of venereal disease, Betty, a shop girl, pays a severe price for just one 'slip'.

In Australia, five children pursue horse thieves through the mountains.

Time-travel to a 1940s classroom with this exemplary educational film.

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army.

A party of children take an eye-opening tour of John Brown's Shipyard in Clydebank.

A retired Major's efforts to hone his golf skills are thwarted by the diminutive but defiant common daisy.

A look at the Lake District and its famous poet.

Claustrophobic train-set comedy-thriller (produced by H.G. Wells son) with an ace reporter coming up against crooks intent on stealing a gold shipment on the Scotland to London express. A scatterbrained scientist, a gun-toting dame with revenge on her mind and a pair of eccentric spinster crime novelists – who steal the film – round out the motley band of passengers who cross the path of our intrepid hero as he tries to get his big scoop.

Part two of two teaching films about human anatomy which is devoted to the action of the skeletal muscles in producing movement of the bones at the joints of the human skeleton. It uses live action and animated medical illustrations as well as an actual skeleton with commentary. A man, naked to the waist, also demonstrates the relevant physical processes such as respiration.

The lecturer shows a microcinematographic sequence of spirochaetes and drawings of the gonoccus (the bacteria responsible for syphilis and gonorrhea). He then turns to an easel and begins to draw 'the road of health'; the cartoon takes this up in magic drawing, in a style that is highly reminiscent of the 'Giro the Germ' series made for the Health and Cleanliness Council a few years before.

A teaching film about the human skeleton with animated medical illustrations as well as an actual skeleton with commentary. A man, naked to the waist, also demonstrates the relevant anatomy. X-ray cineradiography illustrates the movement of the arm.

Story of how two youngsters round up crooks planning to blow up the British fleet off Gibraltar.

Explore London Zoo with one of its greediest residents, Sally the sparrow.

History - and natural history - filmed on location in Selborne, East Hampshire. This unusual edition of the long-running series Secrets of Life tells the story of the village's famous son, Rev Gilbert White, whose 1789 book The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is a classic of natural history. The film follows in his footsteps, with camera rather than quill in hand, focusing on nature but also taking in views of the village and its human inhabitants. The ingenious close coverage of bird, reptile and other wildlife was the stock-in-trade of the filmmakers at Gaumont-British Instructional, producers of the series. Under the direction of the redoubtable Mary Field, the behind-screen talent here includes legendary 'cine-biologists' Percy Smith and Oliver Pike. A tribute by one generation of pioneering naturalists to another, it's a quietly moving film in spite of its clipped English reserve - or perhaps partly because of it.

Go with the flow: to gentle but spellbinding effect this innovative natural history film glimpses marine life astride rising tides at Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae. Urchins, lugworm, weaver-fish and crabs are the shy-but-elegant stars coaxed onto the screen (with the assistance of Millport’s local research station) for this archetypal edition of Gaumont-British Instructional’s 1930s cinema series Secrets of Life.

A film based on a story by Leo Tolstoy about a cabinet maker, his wife and an angel punished by God.

Adventures on a fishing boat as told by two young boys who experience what it takes to be a fisherman at sea.

Poetic tribute to Mrs Turner's vegetable growing prowess, plus the delights of "wartime steaks".

Part of the archive's Junior Biology series, this study of maize is aided by diagrammatic, time-lapse, and microscopic footage.

E.V.H. Emmett narrates this propaganda short about how sacrifices on the home front support the war effort.