Topic description and stories

Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare – and an envelope of ectoplasm: Cambridge University Library at 600

23 Dec 2015

In 2016, Cambridge University Library will celebrate 600 years as one of the world's greatest libraries with a spectacular exhibition of priceless...

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King’s College Chapel: A History and Commentary by John Saltmarsh

King’s College Chapel: an architectural masterpiece and the man who told its story

16 Dec 2015

Five hundred years ago the masons working on one of the world’s most famous buildings completed the stonework of a chapel conceived some 70 years...

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Churchill Papers added to UNESCO’s list of the world’s greatest cultural treasures

30 Nov 2015

Winston Churchill’s vast archive – including his wartime speeches, letters to Stalin and three US Presidents – has been added to UNESCO’s...

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Arthur Schnitzler, 1912

Saved from the Nazis in 1938: Schnitzler archive to remain in Cambridge

28 Oct 2015

Saved from destruction by the Nazis and smuggled in secret to Cambridge, the rescue of author Arthur Schnitzler’s archive is as dramatic as any...

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Stills from the Kendall III film

A glimpse of India

26 Oct 2015

Kevin Greenbank, archivist at the Centre of South Asian Studies, explores the ways in which the home movie offers fascinating insights into the lives...

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Charles Augustus Whitehouse's diary and souvenirs

The Sea-Pie and the sad sailor

16 Oct 2015

The idiosyncratic diaries of one man’s voyage from Liverpool to India, and the exquisite painted souvenirs he bought there, are among the treasures...

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Margaret Thatcher

‘Hectoring, strident and bossy’: Thatcher papers for 1985 reveal plans to soften the Iron Lady

09 Oct 2015

Massive unemployment, the end of the miners’ strike and a controversial decision to try and exclude the Prime Minister from a Falklands War memorial...

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Margaret Thatcher

Archive of Margaret Thatcher acquired for the nation

18 Jun 2015

Margaret Thatcher’s previously unpublished memoir of the Falklands War has been acquired for the nation - after Arts Council England today announced...

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Detail from the 14th-century copy of Magna Carta at St John’s College

Images of rare Magna Carta find go online

12 Jun 2015

Images of a rare copy of Magna Carta at St John's College are being made available to coincide with the document's 800th anniversary.

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The Soul of an Officer, a sketch from one of Siegfried Sassoon’s journals. 1916

‘A sunlit picture of hell’: Sassoon’s war diaries go online for first time

01 Aug 2014

Siegfried Sassoon’s First World War diaries – some bearing traces of mud from the Somme – are among 4,100 pages from his personal archive being made...

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Mitrokhin's handwritten copy of the KGB First Chief Directorate Lexicon

Mitrokhin’s KGB archive opens to public

07 Jul 2014

KGB files from the famous Mitrokhin Archive – described by the FBI as ‘the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source’ –...

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Q&A: how archives make history

07 Apr 2014

The early modern period (1500-1800) saw a surge in the keeping of records. A conference later this week (9-10 April 2014) at the British Academy will...

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