Thomas Henry Farrer (1819-1899) was an English civil servant. He was Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade from 1867 to 1886 and was given the title of Baron in Queen Victoria’s 1893 Birthday Honours. We hold Farrer’s personal library. The library is made up of over 2000 books, some of which date as far […]
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Ernest Howard Shepard (1879-1976) is perhaps best known for illustrating A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books, but he also illustrated another much-loved children’s book, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. The Wind in the Willows tells the story of Mole, Ratty, Toad and Badger. The setting for their adventures takes inspiration from the pastoral countryside […]
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Nature is richly represented in our collections. Trees, plants, landscapes, and animals can all be found in the myriad of drawings, writings, and photographs we hold. Whilst illustrations by E.H. Shepard might be an obvious first place to look, our dance archives also offer a glimpse of the natural world, our university archives document the […]
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Once upon a time, in order to communicate with a business associate in another location, a person would write a letter using pen and paper. Or they might dictate their message to their secretary who would type it. The letter would be placed in an envelope and sent by messenger or postal worker. The letter […]
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At present, working from home means I can’t access the collections, so this rather puts paid to new cataloguing. However, what I can do is use the information in our electronic files to enhance our collection descriptions and write ones for archives which we haven’t yet catalogued. In other words, I am getting to know […]
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National Gardening Week runs from Monday 27th April – Sunday 3rd May this year, and naturally we decided to delve into the archives for inspiration for those who have a garden. First up we found a rather peculiar (and unhelpful) article in the Battersea Polytechnic Magazine from March 1922 (Vol 14 No. 62). We then […]
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