All posts by francescaalves

New: Catalogue of the Archive of Denis Healey

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences,

The archive of Labour Party politician Denis Healey is now available for consultation. The catalogue can be consulted online at Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

via Wikimedia Commons

Healey held various roles both in and out of government, including Secretary of State for Defence, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Shadow Foreign Secretary and Deputy leader of the Labour Party, and ran for Party leadership in 1976 and 1980. The archive contains papers on Healey’s political work, as well as his personal interests, particularly his love of photography.

A real highlight of the collection are Healey’s diaries, which he kept throughout his life and cover holidays he took as a youth, his service in Second World War, and his political career all the way from his first job as International Secretary of the Labour Party to his death in 2015. These diaries give a personal, and often entertaining view of his times and his contemporaries – I particularly like his 1946 description of Michael Foot: “He looks like the Tory idea of a weedy Bolshie – gaunt, black hair en brosse, black glasses, bad teeth, and a ravaged complexion, and talks with a nervous cockney glottal stop” (MS. Healey 62).

Diaries of a cycling holiday in Germany, July-August 1936, from MS. Healey 61

My personal favourites, however, aren’t his political diaries, but rather the group of diaries he kept to record a cycling holiday he took to Germany in 1936. These were written in rough while on the holiday, written up neatly on his return (a good thing, as Healey’s handwriting is pretty terrible) and illustrated with postcards, photographs and sketches. Healey was a passionate anti-fascist, to the extent of leaving the Communist Party because of their opposition to WW2 following Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and in 1965 he had an altercation with notorious neo-Nazi Colin Jordan who invaded the stage at a town hall meeting: “I barged him off”, Healey says in his diary (MS. Healey 63), but contemporary newspapers seemed sure it was a punch. However, his experience of travelling around and talking to people strongly influenced his post-war attitudes to international relations, as well as simply being a fascinating and oddly charming account of an outsider’s view of Nazi Germany.

New: Catalogue of the archive of James Callaghan (1912-2005), Labour Prime Minister

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Cataloguing, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences

The archive of James Callaghan is now available for consultation. The catalogue can be accessed online at Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

James Callaghan in 1978 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Leonard James Callaghan, better known as Jim, was born in Portsmouth in 1912. His first job, at the age of 17 was as a tax inspector, and while working with the Inland Revenue he became involved in the trade unions, working as branch secretary of the Association of Officers of Taxes. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, and reached the rank of lieutenant in 1944. He stood in the 1945 general election and was elected Member of Parliament for Cardiff South East (later Cardiff South and Penarth), a seat he held until his retirement in 1987.

Callaghan remains the only person to have held the four great offices of state – that is the offices of Chancellor of the Exchequer (from 1964-1967, when he was responsible for trying to stabilise sterling and the balance of payments deficit), Home Secretary (from 1967-1970, when he oversaw legislation including the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 and the Race Relations Act), Foreign Secretary (1974-1976, when, among other things he worked on the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community), and Prime Minister. His term as Prime Minister is probably best remembered for its end, with the infamous period of industrial action known as the “Winter of Discontent” and the vote of no-confidence that led to the dissolution of his government and Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power.

Callaghan stayed on as leader of the Labour Party until 1980, when he was succeeded by Michael Foot. In 1987 he retired as a Member of Parliament and was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Callaghan of Cardiff. His autobiography ‘Time and Chance’ was published in the same year. He died in 2005, eleven days after the death of his wife Audrey, who he married in 1938.

Callaghan’s archive contains material relating to all of his political roles, and show an interesting picture of a period of change in Britain, both on international level with papers on decolonisation and independence movements in Malta, Cyprus, and Africa, in British industry, particularly the privatisation of British Steel, which was a major employer in Callaghan’s constituency of Cardiff South and Penarth, and in the Labour Party itself, with papers on 1980 commission of enquiry, which changed the way the Labour Party was funded and how the leader was elected.

New catalogue: Archive of David Astor

20th century, 21st century, Cataloguing, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2020), , , , , , , ,

The catalogue of newspaper editor and philanthropist David Astor is now complete and available online via Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

In the middle of July I took a trip to the village of Sutton Courtenay –it was a sunny day, lockdown and there was not much else I could think of doing. Besides, I’d been meaning to visit for a while. I’d heard that George Orwell was buried in the churchyard there. How Orwell came to be buried in Sutton Courtenay is quite a well-known story –  Orwell wanted to be buried in the nearest Church of England cemetery to where he died, but finding there were none in central London with any space, his family appealed to his friends for help, and David Astor, who lived in Sutton Courtenay stepped up. And as it happens, Astor is now buried just behind his friend.

The graves of George Orwell and David Astor at All Saints’ Church, Sutton Courtenay

Orwell was one of many writers who, though not strictly journalists, were recruited by Astor to write for The Observer, but as you can see their friendship extended beyond the literary. When Orwell was suffering from a bout of tuberculosis and was recommended clean air by doctors, Astor arranged for him to stay on the island of Jura, a place where the Astor family had large estates and where David Astor had spent many childhood holidays. It was while staying on Jura that Orwell wrote 1984.

George Orwell is certainly not the only big name to crop up in the David Astor archive – going through his correspondents is almost like reading Who’s Who, including, of course a large amount of correspondence with his mother Nancy Astor, the first woman to take a seat in Parliament. There is, however, a definite lean towards Astor’s philanthropic interests. Members of the anti-apartheid movement feature heavily, especially the noted campaigner Michael Scott, and of course Nelson Mandela.

It’s not just the famous in this archive though, but also the infamous. Astor’s great interest in prison reform led him to become, along with Lord Longford, one of the most high profile campaigners for the release of “Moors murderer” Myra Hindley. Though the campaign to get her parole – or at least an end date for her sentence – was ultimately unsuccessful, Astor and Hindley corresponded regularly up until Astor’s death in 2001. He clearly found her letters indicative of her reformed character. Whether others will – well, they’ll have to read them to judge them.

New catalogue: Archive of Michael Sayers

20th century, Cataloguing, Humanities, Newly available (2020), , , , ,

The catalogue of Irish-American writer Michael Sayers is now complete and available online via Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts.

Chances are, Michael Sayers is a name you aren’t familiar with, and a brief glance at the catalogue might suggest that he is interesting because of the people he knew rather than in his own right. After all, being a correspondent of the likes of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and a former flatmate of Rayner Heppenstall and George Orwell is a pretty good claim to fame, right?

Early in his career, Sayers aspired to poetry and writing for theatre, but perhaps more interesting that his purely literary output was his work in journalism. Having arrived in New York in 1936 to work for renowned theatre designer Norman Bel Geddes, Sayers soon found himself writing articles for various left wing magazines, including Friday, PM and the anti-fascist newsletter The Hour. While he was working for The Hour, Sayers met journalist and the newsletter’s founder Albert E. Kahn. Kahn’s aim was to use The Hour as a vehicle for investigative journalism to counteract the pro-Nazi propaganda of organisations such as the German-American Bund and to expose acts of espionage and sabotage. He certainly found plenty of it – Kahn and Sayers collaborated on three books, two of which – Sabotage! The Secret War Against America (1942) and The Plot Against The Peace (1945) – dealt solely on the Nazi threat to the United States. Their third book, The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia (1946) was an international best seller, though with its acceptance of the reasons behind the Moscow Purge trials probably put this book on the wrong side of history.

Books by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, from MS. 12451/83 and MS. 12451/84

Did everything end happily for Sayers and Kahn? Well… Not entirely. It probably comes as no surprise that both Sayers and Kahn had Communist sympathies, and their journalistic works brought them to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Both were blacklisted. Sayers left America and came back to Europe, living first in Britain, then France. Like many other blacklisted writers he was invited to write scripts for Sapphire Films, working on episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood under then name Michael Connor. Kahn and Sayers never worked together again. Judging by some of the correspondence in MS. 12451/7, it appears they had a disagreement over royalties, which seems like a suitably writer-y way to end a collaboration.