“Experiencing culture in the home” seems to be me to be a very strong choice of research theme, and a little explored area; I hope this project will go further. My own specialist subject – popular music in the first quarter of the twentieth century and particularly in the war years- offers particular challenges which I would like to sketch out in this paper. This is more in the nature of a framework for future work than an account of completed research. Clearly one of the reasons that the study of culture, including popular culture, in the twentieth century, has concentrated on public spaces (theatres, concert halls, music festivals, gentleman’s clubs and so on) is the availability of archives: such places sometimes have extant records: programme notes, contemporary press reviews, end of year reports for shareholders and so on. The most valuable resource for my period is no doubt the specialist press, which was rich and varied, and much of it has survived.