Topic description and stories

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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Estimated to be worth millions on the open market, the ‘Manual of Calligraphy and Painting’ was made in 1633 by the Ten Bamboo Studio in Nanjing.

Oracle bones and unseen beauty: wonders of priceless Chinese collection now online

22 Jul 2015

A banknote from 1380 that threatens decapitation, a set of 17th-century prints so delicate they had never been opened, and 3000-year-old ‘oracle...

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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Margaret Thatcher’s previously unpublished memoir of the Falklands War has been acquired for the nation - after Arts Council England today announced...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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Scott Polar Research Institute awarded £500,000 from Heritage Lottery Fund

09 Oct 2014

Through its Collecting Cultures programme, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced a £5 million funding package which will benefit 23 museums...

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Uncovering the text of the New Testament

12 Sep 2014

A £1.1m campaign by Cambridge University Library to secure one of the most important New Testament manuscripts – the seventh-century Codex Zacynthius...

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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 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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Early surviving copy of The Brus conserved for Bannockburn anniversary

22 Jun 2014

One of the two oldest surviving copies of 'The Brus' – a medieval poem famous for its vivid, early description of the Battle of Bannockburn – has...

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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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