Discover Issue 8/April 2018

DISCOVER Issue 8/April 2018

The University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections INSIDE: Grim tales • Cotton Research Corporation • Birth of the NHS • 5 minutes with Kathryn

Welcome

Welcome Welcome to the latest edition of Discover, The University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections’ Newsletter.

Our exhibition Danelaw Saga: Bringing Vikings back to the East Midlands which has just closed has been a great success, especially the link to Viking: Rediscover the Legend, the touring exhibition from the British Museum and the York Museums Trust being shown at the Djanogly Gallery. This edition of our Newsletter introduces our latest exhibition From Rags to Witches: The grim tale of children’s stories.

Over the last few years we have been increasing the number of our student placements, offered as part of degree modules. These placements enhance the career employability of students, particularly in the highly competitive heritage sector, whilst also providing valuable assistance to the work of Manuscripts and Special Collections. For the first time we have a placement providing support to our exhibition programme and Fiona Postans tells us how she has expanded her knowledge of fairy tales from working on From Rags to Witches. The curator of the exhibition, Kathryn Steenson, also features in our 5 minutes with… spot.

Exhibitions can also stimulate new acquisitions. This can be seen in a number of additions to our literary collections following the Collected Words exhibition.

The report on Recent Acquisitions also highlights some significant additions to the University archives including over 2000 building plans transferred from the Estates department and the papers of the first Professor of Nursing, Professor Jane Robinson. As custodians of the corporate memory of the University we are always pleased to be offered the papers of former members of staff and alumni alongside official University records.

Continuing on a medical theme we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the National Health Service with an article on the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire’s Hospital Saturday fund.

This supported the work of local hospitals from its foundation in 1873 until well after the foundation of the NHS. If you would like to find out more about any aspect of our work please do not hesitate to contact me.

Meanwhile I hope that you enjoy reading this edition of Discover.

Mark Dorrington Keeper of Manuscripts and Special Collections

Giving birth to the NHS On 5 July 1948 the Secretary for Health Aneurin Bevan officially launched an ambitious new service: the National Health Service. At its core were three principles: that it meet the needs of everyone, that it be free at the point of delivery, and that it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay.

At the moment of its birth, the NHS immediately became Britain’s third largest employer with approximately 364,000 staff across England and Wales, compared to roughly 1.5 million staff today.

Before the National Health Service patients were generally required to pay for their health care, provided by a confusing array of different organisations and covered by a hotchpotch of private and public schemes. Charities, local authorities, voluntary hospitals and occupational welfare societies all provided different types of healthcare for different people under different rules.

One of these organisations was the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Hospital Saturday Fund, which began in 1873.

The purpose was to raise subscriptions from local firms or through charity fundraising events, which would then be given to various local medical charities, among them the General Hospital, the Children’s Hospital, the Women’s Hospital, the General Dispensary, Eye Infirmary and the Samaritan Hospital.

Concerts were a popular way to raise money through ticket prices and collections at the events, and the advertisements were not averse to trying to guilt people into supporting them; a poster from the 1920s reminds residents of Hucknall that patients from their community cost the General Hospital £1,500 in 1925, about £700 more than they had subscribed (NH Ne 1).

By 1938 there were 1,700 local firms participating in the scheme.

Contributors could obtain free medical aid at the hospitals included in the scheme. By 1947, the number of contributors had risen to 137,387, a significant proportion of Nottingham’s population.

Early minutes of the fund (later volumes are closed for 100 years to protect patient privacy) show the committee debating the appeals in difficult cases where the fund initially refused to pay medical costs: a difficult maternity case that cost more than anticipated, whether a cancer patient’s sudden turn for the worse was considered an emergency case (and therefore covered) or a chronic case (and therefore not).

To modern sensibilities these local hospitals had very odd criteria for admission. Patients were often required to provide a surety to cover burial costs in case of their death, which must have been incredibly reassuring. Some hospitals even specified what garments patients needed to provide on admission. Even in the 1920s the Hospital Linen Guild was established at Nottingham General Hospital to provide patients and staff with the garments

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Spotlight

Good health for all: an examination of the Government’s proposals for a National Health Service (London, 1944). Fred Westacott Printed Collection Pamphlet RA412.5.G7.G6, barcode 1007261602.

Concert flyer and newspaper article; 1925-1928, NH Ne 1.

they needed, such as pyjamas, babies’ vests, and surgical gowns and masks, and provide the Matron with funds to buy sheets, blankets and quilts. Sewing groups gave help in kind, and cash was raised through subscriptions collected by members. Post-NHS, and with the Hospital’s services changing, the charity adapted to provide furnishings and fittings on the wards, and later tackled projects such as purchasing a minibus for elderly and infirm patients in the 1980s.

National Health Service Leaflet, Uhc X 4/1/2/1.

The character of the medical care provided also changed over the years. When the General Hospital opened in 1781 rules had governed how long in-patients could stay before they had to reapply (two months). Domestic servants and soldiers could only be admitted if their superiors agreed to pay for their treatment, and the hospital did not admit pregnant women or children at all. Pregnancy and birth were considered a normal aspects of women’s lives and not requiring special care. When women and children did fall ill, it was believed that they should be cared for at home by family and friends (Uhg Ru 7).

This changed in the nineteenth century when special hospitals for women and children opened, but the vulnerability of babies and young children was one of the arguments used to support the NHS. Some private health insurance schemes offered by employers restricted healthcare solely to the workers, or placed restrictions on what dependents were entitled to.

The phrase National Health Service was first used by Dr Benjamin Moore, in 1910’s The Dawn of the Health Age. Moore argued that the entire health system needed remodelling to save lives and money through preventing diseases rather than attempting, with varying degrees of success, to cure them. Two decades later AJ Cronin, himself a doctor, explored medical ethics and criticised the existing healthcare system in his 1937 novel The Citadel, in which a doctor from a Welsh mining village leaves for a private practice in London.

These publications are credited with establishing public support for a nationalised health service, but it wasn’t until the outbreak of WWII that there was the political impetus to act. The Emergency Hospital Service was created in 1939 to treat potential casualties of war, and gave a practical demonstration of a centralised, state-run health service. Less than a decade later, the NHS was born.

Rules of the General Hospital, Nottingham; 1924, Uhg Ru 7.

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Spotlight

The Cotton Research Corporation Library The British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) began as an organisation of the various bodies connected to the Lancashire cotton industry, with offices in Manchester and agents on location in the colonies.

The purpose of the BCGA was to reduce the British cotton industry’s dependence on supplies of raw cotton from the United States by promoting cotton growing in the British Empire. A combination of a non-governmental organisation and a development agency, it provided development funds without requiring any direct repayment, but with longer-term indirect benefit to the Lancashire cotton industry via more secure cotton supplies.

In 1916 the British Government set up its own agency, the Empire Cotton Growing Association, devoted to the rapid development of cotton growing in the Empire. The Government was dissatisfied with a non-state organisation undertaking activities they regarded as proper to colonial administration.

Consequently the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, founded

by Royal Charter in 1921, took over most the BCGA’s work in 1927, although the latter continued as a representational trade body.

The Cotton Research Corporation evolved from the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation. After the Second World War the Corporation’s work was increasingly geared to improving the agricultural economies of the producing countries. The Corporation became solely an instrument of development, a change in function which was formalised in 1966 by the change in name from the now British Cotton Growing Corporation to the Cotton Research Corporation.

The Cotton Research Corporation’s papers and library of printed materials came to the University of Nottingham in the 1970s.

During its institutional history the Corporation increasingly abandoned direct involvement in cotton growing projects and directed its attention toward research, building up a library of printed materials.

The Cotton Research Corporation Library (CRCL) publications focus mainly on scientific and economic research into cotton farming in Africa, notably Sudan, Nigeria, the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and other former colonies in West Africa; Uganda and Kenya in East Africa, Nyasaland (modern Malawi), Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia) Southern Rhodies/ Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) and the Union of South Africa.

A substantial part of the library is dedicated to the study of diseases and pests affecting the cotton crop-plant; and of

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soil conditions and irrigation in the relevant environments.

For scientific purposes the publications are often illustrated with photographs and other graphic material. These vary in production value but have potentially high documentary value as they capture landscape, agricultural workers and farming conditions in former British and other colonies throughout the 20th century.

The magnitude of the British effort to grow in Africa the long-staple cotton strains suitable for the spinning machinery in Lancashire, is analysed in Sven Beckert’s 2014 study Empire of cotton: a new history of global capitalism, a copy of which is held in Manuscripts and Special Collection: by 1913, 74 percent of all cotton exported from Africa to Europe came from the British colonies, with 15 million people globally, about one percent of the world’s population, engaged in growing cotton. According to the BCGA, quoted by Beckert, no other part of the world had “larger latent possibilities than our West African possessions” with plenty of land and labour available. However, securing labour from African farmers and ensuring that they cultivated the right crops for the British manufacturing industry required a calculated intervention in local markets.

Prior to colonialism, food production in Africa was in the hands of African farmers. Under British colonial rule organisations like the BCGA targeted African countries deliberately to source raw materials like cotton for the booming industry at home. The new colonial administrations often introduced tax systems and legislation that limited local farmers to growing crops they could sell on the local market in order to pay their taxes. In Sudan’s Gezira region the Sudan Plantation Syndicate, established in London in 1904, dictated the use of land to farmers by providing most of the financing. This led to the introduction of cash crop agriculture in many parts of Africa. The decline of food production continued as more farmers planted cotton for higher incomes from their land.

However, the interventionism of the BCGA went further than encouraging local economies to embrace cotton production.

The CRCL includes material on the commercial cultivation of peanuts, tobacco, sugarcane and local trades such as fishing.

This literature was relevant to the Corporation because revenues from alternative crops could outcompete cotton and cause slumps in the cotton supply from African countries, which the Corporation sought to sustain. The BCGA pursued this proactively to the extent of paying African farmers at least

market rates and, when worldwide cotton prices slumped, even above-market rates, to ensure growers did not stop growing cotton.

The BCGA also encouraged the British Government to invest in infrastructure projects likely to benefit cotton production, such as roads, railways and irrigation works, including the Sennar Dam in Sudan and the expansion of Nigeria’s Railways.

Monographs about local infrastructure development concerning transport, public health, housing and welfare are included in the library.

The research value of this library lies in its trove of information about the British Empire in Africa. The library can advance research into the ideology which underpinned these manifestations of colonial rule. Cultural constructs and their applications from this still-recent chapter of history are recorded therein. They can be detected in documents such as the Official report of the visit of the delegation of the International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers’ Associations to Egypt, October-November, 1912 and report by the secretary on his subsequent tour in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, NovemberDecember, 1912, a richly illustrated document of its time prefaced by the Governor-General of Sudan, Sir Francis Reginald Wingate. They can be traced in the influential book published by Frederick Lugard in 1922, The Dual Mandate, of which the CRCL has a first edition. Lugard, then governor of Nigeria, famously argued that history or culture are absent from Africa: “Africa has been justly termed ‘the Dark Continent’, for the secrets of its peoples, its lakes, and mountains and rivers, have remained undisclosed not merely to modern civilisation, but through all the ages of which history has any record..” In sub-Saharan

Africa, he writes, “there are no traces of antecedent civilisations – no monuments or buried cities – like those of the prehistoric civilisations of Asia and South America.”

Most important, and unique to this special collection, is the visual content captured inadvertently in images taken on location and used to illustrate scientific literature. These images lend themselves to research as historic documents of a counter-narrative, the camera often capturing more life and evoking a different side to the reality it was meant to illustrate.

Browse the Cotton Research Corporation Library using NUsearch with the field ‘Collection’ and the name ‘Cotton Research Corporation Library’, or the acronym ‘CRCL’. nusearch.nottingham.ac.uk Images taken from publications in the Cotton Research Corporation Library, CRCL.

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The Not So ‘Happily Ever After’ of Fairy Tales

by Fiona Postans, Exhibitions Student Placement, School of English

airy tales are at the heart of childhood story-time: tales of the struggles of innocent damsels oppressed by evil stepmothers, who are helped by fairy godmothers and saved by charming princes. But did you know that in Cinderella the evil stepsisters almost marry the prince by cutting off their toes to fit into Cinderella’s slipper? Not only that, but as a result, their eyes are pecked out by birds so that Cinderella can eventually marry the prince herself! As I discovered in my placement, helping with the fairy tale exhibition From Rags to Witches, evidently there was a lot that was left out of the stories that I was told as a child.

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From Rags to Witches: The grim tale of children’s stories, traces the development of children’s literature through the generations, from their bloodthirsty birth in sinister European forests, to benign bedtime tales where “Children with their Milk are fed with the Tales of Witches, Hobgoblins, Prophecies and Miracles”.

It takes a look at the earliest versions of some of the classic fairy tales, versions which were definitely not for children, and how they have evolved to suit the changing society and different cultures that adopted them. Some of the earliest surviving written fairytales are from Le piacevoli notti by Giovanni Francesco Straparola published in 1570 although many of them are based on much older tales. Spread orally, the stories would have existed in many different versions before they were written down, but even since, major changes have been made from how they were first printed.

As already mentioned the Cinderella story, well known today, has undergone a lot of revisions, but somewhat surprisingly the earliest version of the story that has been found was in a Chinese book dated to 850-860 AD, suggesting that the story’s origins may have been Asian rather than European. In this, and other early versions, Cinderella’s helper is a reincarnation of her mother, a link often left out of modern retellings. In fact, it wasn’t until Perrault’s retelling of the story in 1697 that Cinderella’s slipper was even made of glass.

Sleeping Beauty also has uncomfortably darker aspects to the story; unlike the familiar modern story in earlier versions of the tale, rather than receiving a kiss, Beauty is raped by the Prince, breaking the spell and causing her to wake up. Beauty then gives birth to two children and marries the Prince, but is prevented from living ‘happily ever after’ by the Prince’s mother, who tries to eat Beauty and her two children. Kept safe by the cook, who serves the Queen animal meat instead, Beauty is eventually saved by the Prince who is forced to kill his evil mother.

By the nineteenth century fairy tales had been almost completely relegated to the nursery and some of their overtly graphic content removed accordingly, a process that would

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Witch in Aunt Louisa’s London Picture Book (London, 1867). Briggs Collection PZ6.V2 Oversize barcode 1006125533.

continue into the twentieth century. A wave of Victorian morality stories and cautionary tales dispensed with wolves and witches and set the stories in contemporary society. For the most part they are now long-forgotten, but they reflected a world of rigid religious, class, and gender roles for children.

The nineteenth century was also when children’s books became truly beautiful. Illustrators, such as Kate Greenaway who spent part of her childhood at Rolleston in Nottinghamshire, charmed readers with striking and evocative drawings that are still popular today.

Using original archives and rare books from Manuscripts and Special Collections, From Rags to Witches will explore a range of children’s literature, from the beloved to the forgotten tales that never got a happily ever after.

The exhibition has been curated by staff from Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham. It runs from Friday 4 May to Sunday 26 August 2018.

Opening hours

Weston Gallery Nottingham Lakeside Arts, University Park Open Tuesday–Friday 11am–4pm.

Saturdays and Sundays 12noon-4pm.

Closed Mondays.

Free admission.

Exhibition news

‘Rapunzel’, Early poems of William Morris, illustrated

by Florence Harrison (London, 1914). Central Store 2 PR5078.E2 barcode 6002108520.

The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood, Her Grandmamma, and the Wicked Wolf (Nottingham, 1896). EMSC Pamphlet Not 3.Y16 LIT barcode SC8944.

The cowslip, or, More cautionary stories in verse, by Mrs Elizabeth Turner (London, 1885).

Briggs Collection PZ6.7.T8 barcode 600193157X.

Tales of passed times by Mother Goose, written in French by M Perrault and englished [sic] by RS Gent (London, 1796). Briggs Collection PZ6.1.P4 barcode 6001920272.

EXHIBITION EVENTS A series of events will be held to accompany the exhibition at Nottingham Lakeside Arts. Places are limited. Book in advance on 0115 846 7777 or at lakesidearts.org.uk LUNCHTIME TALKS

Djanogly Theatre. Admission free. 1–2pm.

THE USES OF FAIRY TALES: ENCHANTING IDEOLOGIES AND RADICAL TRANSFORMATIONS Thursday 10 May Rachel Palfreyman, Associate Professor in German Studies at the University of Nottingham, discusses how fairy tales have been interpreted, ranging from their exploitation for political purposes to Bettelheim’s orthodox and much-criticised Freudian approach – and how readers brush ideology aside to return to the stories again and again.

INVISIBLE STORYTELLERS: CINDERELLA, PINOCCHIO AND THE REMARKABLE ROLE OF TRANSLATORS IN THE HISTORY OF BRITISH CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Thursday 5 July When we see a child enjoy the stories of Cinderella and Pinocchio, or engrossed in an Asterix album, it is easy to forget the role of a translator in producing English versions of these tales. From Robert Samber’s first and much admired translation of Perrault’s fairy tales in 1729 to Anthea Bell’s nimble alternatives to French puns in the Asterix series, Gillian Lathey, Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton London, will introduce some of these invisible storytellers and pay homage to their neglected craft.

CHILD READERS AND THEIR BOOKS IN NINETEENTHCENTURY BRITAIN Thursday 26 July Colin Heywood, Emeritus Professor of Modern French History at the University of Nottingham, focuses on the society and culture in which the children reading the books in the exhibition were raised. This talk will cover the massive increase in the quantity and quality of literature written specifically for children in nineteenth-century Britain, which included a shift in content, from heavily didactic works to those concerned above all with giving pleasure to their readers, leading to a ‘golden age’ during the second half of the century. It will also analyse the underlying forces at work, notably the growing interest in childhood and education, and the achievement of near-universal literacy.

WORKSHOPS

Visual Arts Studio STORYBOARDING PICTUREBOOKS Wednesday 9 May, 9am–1pm £20 (£10 concessions). For ages 16+.

This practical session will introduce you to the fundamentals of creating picturebooks for children. Author-illustrator Carol Adlam will take you through the building blocks of creating a picturebook, focusing on storyboarding and producing thumbnail layouts for your work. Please come to the workshop with an idea for a picturebook, written down in no more than 100 words.

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Walter Crane’s Sleeping Beauty from 1876, Household stories: from the collection of the Brothers Grimm, translated from the German by Lucy Crane; and done into pictures by Walter Crane (New York, 1963).

Magdeburg Collection PT921.G7.Z barcode 1001635380.

FROM PIRATES TO PORCUPINES: CREATING MAGICAL CHILDREN’S BOOK CHARACTERS Saturday 4 August, 10am-1pm £6 (accompanying adults free). For ages 5–9.

Join us for a celebration of the magical characters that inhabit children’s illustrated books in a fun workshop aimed at children and families. We want you to create something funny and perhaps even a little bit scary. Working with two published author/illustrators, Sarah McConnell and Maelle Daub, you will create your own illustrated sequence in a fun imaginative session for everyone.

FILM SCREENING Djanogly Theatre.

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (18) Wednesday 13 June, 7.30pm (95 mins) £5 (£3 concessions) A horror-fantasy film based on the werewolf story of the same name in Angela Carter’s 1979 short story collection The Bloody Chamber. In her sleep, teenager Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) disobeys the lesson her grandmother (Angela Lansbury) teaches her to never trust strangers, and in doing so rewrites the ending of Little Red Riding Hood. Directed by Neil Jordan.

Profile

n o s n e e t S n y r ath

K

What is your job title and how long have you worked in Manuscripts and Special Collections?

I’m the Academic and Public Engagement Archivist, and I’ve worked here since 2011.

What does your job as an archivist involve?

I help curate exhibitions in the Weston Gallery at Lakeside and I also create smaller displays in various university locations such as the Jubilee Campus and here in our reading room at King’s Meadow Campus. These displays and exhibitions allow us to showcase our collections and help to raise our profile.

My day to day work includes cataloguing the collections, supervising visitors using original material in the reading room, and answering enquiries. I’m involved in seminars and classes for students, in which I give introductions on how to use the archives and these can be based around specific topics or themes if necessary. I also work with the Careers and Employability Service who run the Nottingham Advantage Award Scheme where students are given the opportunity to get practical work experience, which is absolutely vital for anyone considering a career in archives or information management.

We are hosting more and more of these student placements, which I think is great. In addition to working with the students I also give tours to members of the public who belong to local history groups or who visit during one of our open days, such as the Heritage Open Day event which we took part in for the first time last year. I do seem to spend quite a lot of my time talking about archives but it’s important for us to establish and maintain links with the people who are potentially going to use our collections. I’m responsible for all our social media output – that includes Twitter and our blog, and I also contribute to the Discover newsletter. Occasionally I speak to the media about our collections and events and my most recent appearances include a BBC Radio Nottingham interview about the Threads of Empire exhibition and an appearance on Notts TV to talk about the 40th anniversary of the Queen’s Medical Centre, as we hold the archives of the Medical School.

Have you ever discovered anything unusual or unexpected in the archives?

I’d say human hair! It’s not actually that uncommon to find examples in archives as locks of hair were kept by families as mementos of loved ones. We have at least a dozen different examples - some of which are labelled so we do know who the hair belongs to and when it was cut. People often say that working in archives helps them feel connected to the people they are researching, and I suppose you’re not going to get more personally connected than an actual piece of them.

What are some of the recent projects you’ve worked on?

At the moment I’m working on the next exhibition to be held at the Weston Gallery called Rags to Witches, which tells the often dark history of fairy tales. I’m also busy working on the results of

the Distance Enquiry Survey, which is a national survey aimed at people who contacted archives to request information but didn’t actually visit the archive in person. It’s a detailed survey which lets us to see how satisfied people are with the service they received and it also allows us to compare our results with other archives. It’s important for us to understand where we are doing well and where we can make improvements.

If you could save anything from the present for an archive of the future, what would it be?

Digital records! We’re getting an increasing amount of digital records donated to us but we need more people to think about their long term preservation. We’ve also been doing some work recently to convert some of our analogue holdings (cassette tapes, film reels, VHS tapes etc) to digital so that the content is preserved for the future.

Pw G 3 Lock of hair of Lady Hartington [d. 1754]. Pw G 4 Lock of hair of Miss Mary Anderson [no date]. Enclosed in a letter from Mary Anderson to Dorothy Bentinck, 3rd Duchess of Portland, they must have been cut between 1754-1794. Lady Hartington was Dorothy’s mother, who died from smallpox aged 23 when Dorothy was only four years old.

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Recent acquisitions

Plan of Florence Nightingale Hall, 1952. ACC 2895.

Tubes containing some of the recently acquired plans of University buildings awaiting repackaging and cataloguing. ACC 2895.

What’s new?

Every month sees the addition of new material to our collections with donations from individuals and companies, transfers from other departments in the University and the purchase of items for our printed collections. Here are just some of the items that we’ve taken in recently.

Plans of the Portland Building, 1953. ACC 2895.

University of Nottingham

As holders of the official archive for the University of Nottingham we work hard to establish links with other areas of the University and ensure that the appropriate material is transferred to us so that we can maintain a comprehensive record of the University’s activities. A particularly interesting recent acquisition is a collection of thousands of University building plans (ACC 2895), transferred to us by the University’s Estates Office. The plans cover many of the buildings on University Park Campus including the Portland Building, MRI Centre, chemistry, engineering, biology and education buildings, as well as halls of residence, libraries, and the Sports Centre.

Buildings on the Sutton Bonington and Jubilee Campuses are also represented in the collection. The plans include site plans, structural plans, plans of services and facilities, and elevations.

Work on cataloguing the plans will commence in the next year and once catalogued the collection will provide an invaluable resource for research into the development of the University’s campuses. Estimated at over 2,000 plans, this is one of the largest collections that we’ve taken in in recent years.

Another recent addition to our University archive is a collection of papers from the Registrar’s Office (ACC 2888), which contains some photographs and letters relating to VIP visits to the University in the 1980s and 1990s. This includes a copy letter from Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister at the time) to Vice-Chancellor Colin Campbell, thanking him for an “enjoyable and stimulating” visit in September 1989 during which she opened the new Institute of German, Austrian and Swiss Affairs

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and spoke to Sir Peter Mansfield about his work on the MRI body scanner.

We welcome donations of professorial papers by University academics and were delighted to receive the collection of Professor Jane Robinson, Foundation Professor of Nursing at the University of Nottingham from 1989 to 1997 (MS 997). The collection includes copies of her research papers, research files and data, papers on the Nursing Policy Studies Centre at the University of Warwick (of which she was the Director from 1985 to 1989), and papers relating to her work for the World Health Organisation and World Bank.

The study and funding of History in universities has been a much-debated topic in the recent past, as demonstrated by a donation of material relating to the History at the Universities Defence Group (ACC 2892). This Group was founded in the 1980s to work with and through the Historical Association to defend the scope and quality of the teaching and study of history in British universities, and to monitor the effects of financial cuts on the viability of History in universities. The collection includes minutes and meeting papers from the 1980s to the 2000s, and other papers related to the importance of history teaching in higher education.

Letters and photographs relating to University visits made by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1989, and The Duke of York in 1997. ACC 2888.

Literary archives

Manuscripts and Special Collections (MSC) is home to the internationally renowned DH Lawrence collection, to which we were pleased to recently add a portrait of Lawrence painted by the acclaimed painter and surgeon Ala Bashir (ACC 2877).

Bashir was born in Baghdad in Iraq in 1939, and became a doctor specialising in plastic and reconstructive surgery. He relocated to the UK in 2003. The painting was shown in an exhibition of Bashir’s work entitled In Pursuit of Freedom (Homage to DH Lawrence) which was held at the Nottingham Society of Artists Gallery in 2017.

As part of the recent Collected Words exhibition – which used material from our literary holdings – we have experienced increased interest from authors in donating their papers to MSC. Local author Clare Harvey has donated drafts and scene sketches for part of her latest novel The Night Raid (MS 999).

Clare used these papers in a workshop she gave for Creative Writing MA students at the University of Nottingham’s School of English in 2016. The paper-back version of The Night Raid was launched on board the Nottingham Express Transit tram named in honour of Dame Laura Knight (who features as a character in the novel), followed by a talk and signing at Lakeside Arts Centre under a painting by Knight.

Also on a literary note, we received further items from local playwright and director Stephen Lowe (ACC 2890) to add to his existing archive. These include a published copy of his play Revelations, a volume entitled Peace Plays which contains his work Keeping Body and Soul Together, and a limited edition signed script of Old Big ‘Ead in the Spirit of the Man. One of our student placements from the Department of Music is currently working on our collection of Stephen Lowe’s papers to identify which scripts are missing from the collection. We look forward to working closely with Stephen to ensure the collection is comprehensive and representative of his entire body of work.

His papers will also be complemented by audio and video recordings of his reminiscences.

Local focus

Archives with a more local appeal are also well represented among our recent acquisitions. These include items related to Sutton Colliery (ACC 2884), such as a Low Main Getters Out book from the 1920s, an Accident Register for 1948-1958 and a Pit Head Baths Handbook dated 1956, papers relating to the establishment of Selston Water Works and adult education in the Selston region (ACC 2885), and further material from St Andrew’s with Castle Gate Church (ACC 2887) including orders of service for the induction of ministers at the church and some DVD recordings of services.

Items recently donated by Stephen Lowe. ACC 2881.

Drafts and scene sketches for The Night Raid donated by the author Clare Harvey. MS 999.

East Midlands Collection

As the name suggests our East Midlands Collection is a local history resource, containing printed works about the East Midlands (Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire). The vast majority of material is loanable to people with borrowing rights.

The latest acquisitions for the East Midlands Collection add to the collection’s holdings in architectural and art antiquities with a particular focus on the use of construction materials quarried locally. John F Potter’s work Patterns in Stonework is a nationwide study of ecclesiastical geology.

The two volumes acquired for the East Midlands Collection cover examples of early church architecture in the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire. The Alabaster Carvers by Raymond State documents the use of this prized material in medieval monumental architecture. Mined locally like gypsum is today, alabaster was used to carve effigies and ornaments in high-status tomb architecture. The weathered yet translucent quality of old alabaster as illustrated in this comprehensive study of nearly 900 pages is compelling evidence of an art form in need of reinstatement. The British Library’s publication Writing Britain’s Ruins relates the stages in which the public’s perception of architectural vestiges was transformed from neglect to sentimental idealisation to programmatic conservation by dedicated institutions. Lord Byron’s Newstead Abbey is featured in a chapter about the aesthetics of ruins. The power of ancient stonework to appeal to the collective imagination in societies across millennia is also the subject of the Oxford University Press publication Palaeolithic Cave Art at Cresswell Crags in European Context. This study, enriched with detailed drawings and colour photographs, sets out to gain insights into the authenticity, antiquity and wider context of the prehistoric peoples who traced their art on the limestone of cave dwellings at Cresswell Crags.

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Contact details Manuscripts and Special Collections The University of Nottingham King’s Meadow Campus Lenton Lane Nottingham NG7 2NR mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk +44 (0)115 951 4565 nottingham.ac.uk/ manuscriptsandspecialcollections @ mssUniNott

Parchment, Paper and Pixels Highlights from Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham

Parchment, Paper and Pixels provides a taster of the wonderful collections held by Manuscripts and Special Collections.

This iBook introduces you to a selection of archives, maps, photographs, posters and music covering the globe from Iceland to China by way of Nottingham and the Soviet Union.

Download for free at:

nottingham.ac.uk/open/ebooksandibooks.aspx