archive

Topic description and stories

Detail from a page of doodles by President Ronald Reagan, kept by Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher papers reveal her ‘grimmest year’

17 Mar 2012

Thousands of papers relating to perhaps the toughest year of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership are to be opened to the public at Cambridge University’s...

A painting thought to be of Simon Forman

Magic and medicine

27 Sep 2011

A digital resource dedicated to Simon Forman, the notorious, self-styled astrologer-physician, later dubbed the 'Elizabethan Pepys', has been...

"The food is splendid under the circumstances": letters from the First World War

06 Sep 2011

Correspondence from young men caught up in the ravages of the First World War will be on display to the public for the first time at Christ's College...

Hand-coloured proof of John Speed's map of Cambridgeshire. Atlas.2.61.1

‘Picture This #4’ – John Speed Map of Cambridgeshire, University Library.

31 Aug 2011

John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine is one of the world’s great cartographic treasures.

Commonplace books from the collection of Professor William St Clair

Facebook's precursor

14 Jul 2011

'Commonplace books' were scrapbooks into which people copied their favourite poems and collected together other items – and were used as the basis...

Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow, where the Stalin Prize Committee transcripts are held

Musical notes from Stalin’s prize-givers

07 Jul 2011

The voices of the artistic elite of Stalin’s Soviet Union, among them Dmitri Shostakovich, are being heard afresh in a new comprehensive study of a...

300 years of list-making

20 May 2011

Personal inventories spanning three centuries are helping researchers unlock the mysteries of how economies edge towards growth and prosperity.

Wittgenstein's grave at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge.

Unpublished Wittgenstein archive explored

28 Apr 2011

An archive of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s original work throws fresh light on the workings of a brilliant mind.

John Speed's proof map of Cambridgeshire

Mapping the origins of a masterpiece

21 Apr 2011

Published 400 years ago, the first comprehensive atlas of Great Britain is being celebrated by Cambridge University Library, home to one of only five...