On 3-4 November, I attended a two-day event at the British Library that highlighted the challenges and approaches of collecting materials created during times of war, conflict and crises. Through a series of panels and discussions, museum and library professionals, researchers and private collectors shared examples of incredible historical and contemporary initiatives to preserve diverse materials and heritage sites at risk of loss, decay or destruction.
Having recently worked on the joint Bodleian Libraries and History of Science Museum Collecting COVID project, I was particularly interested in contemporary programmes of collecting. Our project, which ran from 2021-2023, aimed to acquire and preserve the University of Oxford’s research response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It enabled us to capture, catalogue and publish over ninety oral history interviews.
Modern collections/initiatives showcased included:
Web Archiving the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicola Bingham, British Library
Coastal Connections (heritage sites at threat from coastal erosion) Dr Alex Kent, World Monuments Fund)
Endangered Archives Programme (recent case studies include Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan) Dr Sam van Schaik, British Library
Collecting Human Stories during the war in Ukraine, Natalia Yemchenko, Rinat Akhmetov Foundation/Museum of Civilian Voices
Rapid collecting is a means to collect documentary evidence, preserve cultural memories and commemorate events. By providing access to these collections, institutions are then able to build a body of evidence and facilitate research. I was struck by the similarities between modern initiatives and those that had taken place a century before. Some of the contemporary examples of collections crowdsourcing harked back to the collecting of ephemera during the First World War. Dr Ann-Marie Foster highlighted the Bond of Sacrifice Collection and Women’s Work Collection (Imperial War Museums) in her presentation with Alison Bailey, in which families sent items memorialising loved ones, as examples of early collecting initiatives. Modern rapid collecting work has meant that contemporary archivists/curators have taken up this tradition, working actively to save materials at risk of loss through intentional selection.
As well as crowdsourcing and outreach, other strategies institutions draw upon in an increasingly online world are web archiving, digitisation and digital preservation. With social media now a main mode of communication for millions, web archiving is a useful tool to preserve and present online response to global events. Work to capture websites relating to recent events is ongoing at both the Bodleian Libraries and British Library. I found Archive-It to be an incredibly useful tool to capture and publish a range of web pages (including the social media pages of COVID-19 researchers, given with permission) for our project, which without reactive selection and preservation, would otherwise have been at risk of loss.
Overall, the event highlighted that institutions must use active strategies towards preserving at-risk materials created during ongoing crises and conflicts, including:
Involving communities to assist in selection of materials;
Providing as representative a view of the event as possible (capturing diverse perspectives);
Providing access to collections and making them available as widely as possible (ethical considerations and sensitivities permitting);
Democratising collections and preserving them for future generations.
The Digital Archivist Trainees had the opportunity to attend the “Copy that Floppy” workshop organised by the Cambridge Future Nostalgia team on October 9, which provided an introduction to floppy disk imaging for digital archivists and digital preservation practitioners. This blog post outlines some of the key takeaways from our experience, and a full guide to floppy disk imaging produced by Future Nostalgia can be found here.
A floppy disk is a type of media which stores data on a magnetic-coated soft plastic disk in a hard plastic case. Popular in the 1970s–1990s, floppy disks come in several sizes: 8-inch, 5.25-inch, 3.5-inch, and sometimes 3-inch. While the number of 8-inch and 5.25-inch floppy disks sold in this period remained relatively stable, the number of 3.5-inch floppy disks sold rose dramatically in the 1990s. The Future Nostalgia team predicts that there will be a significant rise in the number of 3.5-inch disks in future accessions, and therefore creating the capacity to image 3.5-inch disks in particular before this influx should be a priority.
Workstation equipment including a floppy disk drive, ribbon cable, controller, 3.5-inch high density disk, and a power cable. Photo by Leontien Talboom.
Early floppy disks came in single-sided and double-sided formats, meaning that data could be reliably written on only one or both sides of the disks. It is also important to try to identify the “density”, or the way the disk was encoded and magnetised, as this affects how the disk can be read. 3.5-inch double density disks have a hole only in one corner, whereas 3.5-inch high density disks often have two. 5.25-inch disks are more difficult to identify as double or high density, and 8-inch disks are also sometimes single density. The disk manufacturer and type of computer used to write data can also affect the way the disk can be read (e.g., Mac data can be difficult to read on a non-Mac system and vice versa). Common disk manufacturers included Apple, Amstrad, and IBM.
Floppy disk drives that are compatible with the various sizes of floppy disks can be used with a “controller” to read disks on a modern computer. A controller is a piece of hardware that manages the connection between the disk drive and the modern machine, and crucially, it can read “flux-level data” from the disk. (Some 3.5-inch disks can also be read with a USB floppy drive, but these drives cannot read flux-level data, which can help recover some information when a disk is damaged or degraded.) In the workshop, we used a “Greaseweazle”, which is the most commonly used floppy disk controller, that runs with a Python package of the same name.
In teams, we each assembled a workstation to read various sizes of floppy disks. The Future Nostalgia team provided drives, controllers, and cables, as well as some test disks and workshop participants also brought in their own disks that they had been hoping to read. Excitingly, one member of my team brought in a stack of 3-inch Amstrad floppy disks which tend to be rarer than their 3.5-inch counterparts. We used a 26- to 34-pin ribbon cable to connect the 3-inch drive to our controller and a USB-C cable to connect the controller to a PC. The Amstrad drive also required us to use a flipped power cable compatible with an Amstrad drive to connect to an external 12V power source. Luckily, the expert at our table warned us this was necessary―a regular power cable or a power connection directly to the 5V-compatible Greaseweazle would’ve fried the drive or the board!
Setting up a workstation to image 3-inch Amstrad disks.
Despite everything being connected in a way that should have worked, the Greaseweazle software returned unexpected errors when trying to read the disk. Floppy disk drives and cables are fickle and will sometimes work or not work in the same set-up―it’s worth taking things apart, putting them back together, and trying again. Eventually, we discovered that the controller was unhappy with its connection to the ribbon cable and we had to instead connect it to a different port on the same cable. When that was done, the Greaseweazle was satisfied and we were able to image some Amstrad floppy disks! The first step was to take a flux image of the disk and view it using an emulator. From this flux image we were able to tell whether the disk was damaged (fortunately it was in good shape!) and how many tracks were stored on it. We then were able to convert the raw flux image data into a disk image, and extract some of the text files saved on the disk. It turned out that the stack of 3-inch disks contained research notes and bibliographies compiled by an historian of Anglo-Saxon history from whose archive they came.
My colleague Evie’s team ran into one of the most interesting cases of the day, which amassed a small crowd of practitioners looking over her shoulder while she was imaging a disk. Curiously, the flux image kept returning data for only one side of the double-sided disk. The suspicion that we left with was that the user had first written the disk using both sides of a double-sided drive, but had later overwritten data on only one side by using a single-sided drive. Unfortunately, that meant that the oldest data was lost―but it generated a lot of speculation as to how to go about recovering as much as possible. Floppy disks are complicated, and they and the machines needed to read and write them were expensive. Users found creative ways to reuse and reformat disks, which means that sometimes manufacturers’ labels are misleading when imaging disks today. The Future Nostalgia team estimated that they have success imaging disks about 50% of the time due to degradation or damage, so it was an authentic experience not to get complete data off of all of the disks we saw.
Evie copying some floppies! Photo by Mark Box.
This workshop was a fantastic crash course into floppy disk imaging, and many thanks to the Future Nostalgia team for inviting us along!
Raymond Chandler is best known for hard-boiled crime novels including The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1953) and as a screenwriter for some of the biggest motion pictures of the 1940s, including The Blue Dahlia. Since the start of the year, work has been underway to enhance and expand the original catalogue of the Chandler archive and to integrate and make accessible later accessions. These new additions cover papers and correspondence created by Chandler in his lifetime, as well as a vast afterlife of papers showcasing the legacy of the great mystery writer.
New additions to the archive largely focus on correspondence and papers concerning the Chandler estate, stewarded by his literary agent and heir, Helga Greene. These demonstrate a wealth of interest in Chandler’s work by filmmakers and biographers, largely covering a period from 1960-1990. By the 1970s, small and big screen adaptations of his novels and short stories were becoming apparent as a major focus of interest for the estate. Greene’s defence of Chandler’s work and legacy is evident in the papers, through her diligent renewal of copyright and selective choices over permissions for adaptations, anthologies and new publications. The papers also go into detail over a will contest and include material concerning Greene’s legal fight to be recognised as heir, in a suit brought by Chandler’s former secretary, MS. Chandler 112-113.
Amongst the papers generated by the estate following Chandler’s death are snippets of original writings that demonstrate his natural humour and wit, as well as leisurely pursuits and interests, including cookery and darts. In the final year of his life, whilst working on ‘The Poodle Springs Story’ (the last and unfinished novel, in which Marlowe marries heiress Linda Loring), Chandler and Greene were also collaborating on an idea for a cookery book with a provisional title of ‘Cooking For Idiots.’ Although the book never came to fruition, the collection does hold remnants of the early development of this work. As well as the above letter teasing recipes such as apples baked in cider (‘vociferously admired by anyone who owes me money’), the collection includes an assortment of handwritten recipe cards featuring the culinary creations of Chandler’s late wife Cissy, including ‘Cissy’s Ham Goodbye’ and ‘Pancakes for Raymio,’ MS. Chandler 102 & 106.
Alongside the cookery ‘specials’ of the Chandler household, a glimpse of Chandler’s humour is found in this unsent letter marked ‘For Posterity’ to Los Angeles department store Bullock’s Wilshire (in its heyday a glitzy haunt of famous clientele), where he conjures an elaborate narrative in an effort to return an unwanted sports jacket.
Additionally, original prose such as drafts and typescripts for short stories including ‘The Pencil’ (published as ‘Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate’ in the Daily Mail, 1959) and the fantastic story ‘Professor Bingo’s Snuff’ are now available, along with a selection of assorted notes, prose and unpublished writings in MS. Chandler 7. The material featured in this blog post, along with all other newly catalogued additions to the archive can now be consulted in the Weston Library. The new and enhanced catalogue for the Archive of Raymond Chandler is searchable here.
The Algorithmic Archive project is a one year project funded by the Mellon Foundation. As part of the first Work Package, we explored how researchers from different disciplines use social media data to answer various research questions.
We would like to thank the researchers who generously shared insights from their work.
Use Case – Study on the trustworthiness of social media visual content among young adults (TRAVIS project)[1]
Research questions and aim(s):
Trust And Visuality: Everyday digital practices (TRAVIS) is an ESRC project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. This research project that looks at how young adults experience, build and express trust in news and social media images related to wellbeing and health. It explores how and why people trust some visuals over others and how content creators establish trustworthiness through visual content. The TRAVIS project involves cross-national collaboration of multiple research teams located at different universities in UK and Europe. This includes the University of Oxford, in particular the Oxford team is based School of Geography and the Environment.
Social media data used:
The project included data collected indirectly from platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube (see below).
Tools and methods adopted:
Data collection from social media consisted of screenshots taken from the devices of interviewed young adults, as the TRAVIS project investigates the meaning of social media posts (visual content) via interviews with young adult users. The datasets generated from this method of collection counts around 400 screenshots, stored on an institutional cloud drive, which is accessible by the whole team.
Maria Hary Becket (1931-2012) was a Greek political and environmental activist who worked on a global scale.
The catalogue of the archive of Greek political activist Maria Becket is now online (see catalogue: Collection: Archive of Maria Becket | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts). The archive spans the turbulent international politics of the mid-20th century and also documents the growing environmental movement of the late-20th and early-21st centuries, all told through the personal story of a life fiercely lived in the passionate service of human rights and causes. I found working on the Maria Becket Archive to be revelatory in its documentation of the horrors of repressive regimes and violent conflicts, and the superhuman and sometimes unorthodox efforts that Becket and her family, friends and associates went to try to remedy these problems.
Maria Hary was born in Athens in 1931 into a prominent Greek family – her father, Nikolaos, was active in the resistance against the Nazi occupation in Greece, but his troubled character had a formative effect on her early life. Her mother’s family were from old Constantinople (now Istanbul), which led to Maria’s lifelong interest in Byzantine history. She credited her political awakening to an experience during the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949, when she discovered a girl who had died of starvation on her doorstep and wondered why she had lived and the girl had died.
MS. 23105 photogr. 27. The Hary family in 1949, including Maria Becket aged 18, seated on left, and her father Nikolaos, standing on the right.
After her first marriage to a Greek shipowner and a period studying Byzantine history in London, Maria met American lawyer James Becket on a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic in 1958, and they married, had two daughters, and moved to Geneva in Switzerland. When the Greek government was overthrown by a junta of “colonels” in April 1967, the Beckets immediately became involved in the resistance movement. They were instrumental in the case brought against Greece in the Council of Europe by four Scandinavian countries, where they presented witnesses to testify about the use of torture by the regime. The archive contains testimonies and details of dozens of political prisoners who were tortured under the junta, and information on the horrific conditions in the notorious police building on Bouboulinas Street in Athens and in other Greek prisons. Maria and James Becket were also closely involved with networks of clandestine resistance to the regime of the “colonels”, and organised the escape of political prisoners.
MS. 23105/77. Stamps discouraging tourism in Greece during the military regime period, 1968.
When the junta regime fell and Cyprus was invaded by Turkey in August 1974, Maria Becket organised Radio Free Cyprus to broadcast messages from Cyprus’s deposed leader Archbishop Makarios. Maria was also involved in the placement of Greek-Cypriot refugee children in foster care, and organised a programme for displaced Greek-Cypriot women to produce embroidery items for sale. She was offered the position of Greek Ambassador to the USA in 1974 but turned this down.
MS. 23105/130. Doll wearing Cypriot national costume made by Greek-Cypriot refugees from a group organised by Maria Becket, c.1974.
Maria Becket had a lifelong involvement with Palestine, and had connections to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). She attended PLO training camps in the Greek junta period, and her involvement is documented in the archive. The Beckets also had much wider interests in resistance movements and human rights issues all over the world.
Maria worked as an advisor for the Greek centre-right New Democracy party under Constantine Karamanlis from 1976-1981, and during later election campaigns. She also worked for UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and also became involved in his environmental work.
This work inspired her to begin Religion, Science and the Environment (RSE) in conjunction with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, also known as the Green Patriarch. RSE organised eight floating symposia between 1995 and 2009, in which religious leaders and prominent scientists travelled on epic voyages across seas and rivers through multiple countries, giving a programme of talks addressing the environmental crises in the visited regions. The symposia included journeys on the Aegean Sea, the Arctic Ocean, the River Amazon and the Mississippi.
Maria died in 2012, but in her last years recorded autobiographical interviews which describe her extraordinary life.
The archive includes testimonies and collected information on political prisoners and refugees; planning material on resistance activities; political correspondence; papers on human rights, politics and the environment; photographs relating to political and environmental work; political pamphlets, magazines and ephemera; papers on the organisation of international meetings and symposia; personal correspondence and autobiographical material; and audio-visual and digital material.
The Algorithmic Archive project is a one year project funded by the Mellon Foundation. As part of the first Work Package, we explored how researchers from different disciplines use social media data to answer various research questions.
We would like to thank the researchers who generously shared insights from their work.
Use Case – Exploring Algorithmic Mediation and Recommendation Systems on YouTube [1]
Research questions and aim(s):
The study sought to investigate how the YouTube platform operates, focusing on algorithmic activity and the strategies employed by both human and automated (robot) actors within federal and regional elections. The aim was to understand the impact that this system of mediation has on society and to demystify preconceptions of ideologically neutral technologies in highly disputed political events. The research focuses on two case studies: 1) the 2018 Ontario (Canada) election and 2) the 2018 Brazilian Federal Election. The data collection was carried out during the campaigning periods, between May and June in Ontario, and between August and October 2018 in Brazil.
Social media data used:
The research focussed on the sole YouTube platform. Specifically, the researchers collected information about recommended videos starting from specific keywords related to the election campaign.
Tools and methods adopted:
The data collection was carried out using a Python script developed by the Algo Transparency project. The script automates YouTube search operations based on specified keywords (e.g., the names of the candidates), allowing the researcher to gather video-related data and the relative ranking position displayed to the user. Once the keywords were defined, the tool retrieved links for the top four results for each keyword and then examined the recommendation section. This process was repeated four times, each time collecting recommended videos, simulating a user interacting with algorithmic suggestions.
Data collected was stored on personal devices and the institutional cloud, and can be visualized at the following links:
[1] Reis, R., Zanetti, D., & Frizzera, L. (2020). A conveniência dos algoritmos: o papel do YouTube nas eleições brasileiras de 2018. Compolítica, 10(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.21878/compolitica.2020.10.1.333
The Algorithmic Archive project is a one year project funded by the Mellon Foundation. As part of the first Work Package, we explored how researchers from different disciplines use social media data to answer various research questions.
We would like to thank the researchers who generously shared insights from their work.
Use Case: Network/cluster analysis to investigate the construction and influence of information trustworthiness within social movements on Twitter[1]
Research questions and aim(s):
The researcher wanted to explore the construction and influence of information trustworthiness within social media movements in the context of the Hong Kong protests and the #BlackLivesMatter movements. Social media platforms offer a digital space for social movements to facilitate the diffusion of critical information and the formation of networks, coordinating protests and reach a wider audience.
Social media data used:
This study focused on Twitter as it was used evenly by both social movements, and the researcher already had an established presence on this platform. Also, at the time of data collection (2020-2021), access to Twitter data for academic research was still relatively open to researchers.
For the purpose of this study, the researcher examined the follow and followers’ relationship of top accounts counting millions of followers that had been selected as big information disseminators, including organisations, individuals or accounts serving a particular niche or purpose.
Data collection was conducted at a specific point in time in 2021. Social media data quantitative analysis (e.g. cluster analysis) was complemented with qualitative data collected via an online survey.
Tools and methods adopted:
The researcher requested and obtained access to the Twitter API. However, high-level coding skills were required to access the data, which the researcher did not have at that time due to their predominantly qualitative research background. To address this, the researcher found and used a Go script called Nucoll[2], which is freely available on GitHub and enabled the researcher to collect the required data. Nucoll is a command-line tool that, according to its developer, retrieves data from Twitter using keyword instructions, for which the developer provided example queries and brief explanations. For each social movement, the researcher selected three organisations: one large organisation, one activist group, and one additional account that was relevant to the movement. Once these accounts were selected, they were processed through the script to capture all following/follower relationships and combine them into a graph for each protest analysed. Further data visualisation and analysis — including clustering and network analysis — were conducted using Gephi.
[1] Charlotte Im, The Construction and Influence of Information Trustworthiness in Social Movements, Doctoral Thesis, University College London (UCL), 2024.
In 2024, the Algorithmic Archive Project has received funding from the Mellon Foundation to carry out scoping research that will ultimately support the Bodleian Libraries in the development of a lasting, interoperable infrastructure and sustainable strategies for archiving web-based data, including social media data and algorithms. The project is part of the broader Future Bodleian programme aiming to expand and evolve its centuries-old role by engaging with the digital domain.
Why archive social media data?
In the past two decades, social media platforms have become a central means of communication, enabling people from across the globe to engage in discussions that transcend geographical borders, reflect on contemporary events and contribute to collective memory. Given their profound impact on society, researchers across various disciplines increasingly rely on social media data to analyse social, economic, and political phenomena. However, social media data is inherently ephemeral, subject to continuous evolution driven by changes in platform leadership, economic gain, and shifting policies. For this reason, it is essential to preserve and provide reliable and sustainable access for the (re)use of such an important resource.
Steps towards the development of a social media and algorithmic data service.
The Algorithmic Archive project is articulated in four interconnected phases aimed to investigate the research, archiving, legal and technical landscape to inform the Bodleian Libraries’ future development of a social and algorithmic data service.
The image below offers a visual summary of the work packages that the Research Officers have been exploring over this one-year project.
In upcoming blog posts, we will present some of the results and highlight use cases drawn from research conducted with social media data.
Between 2-4 April 2025, I attended the very first edition of the Born-digital Collections, Archives and Memory conference, together with my colleague from the Algorithmic Archive Project, Pierre Marshall. The conference was co-organised by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme at The British Museum, The British Library and Aarhus University. This international event offered the unique opportunity to bring together academics and practitioners from diverse disciplines, career paths and backgrounds to explore the transformative impact of born-digital cultural heritage. The diverse range of research, methodologies, and practices presented in this year’s programme offered valuable insights and reflections, particularly relevant to the Algorithmic Archive project and its goal of developing sustainable, persistent approaches to preserving born-digital heritage created on the web, especially on social media platforms.
The inspiring opening keynote by Dorothy Berry, Digital Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, highlighted the vital importance of preserving ephemeral and fragile forms of born-digital heritage (such as social media) —many of which have increasingly replaced traditional modes of memory-making, also drawing attention to the pressing need for a deeper understanding of what and how born-digital memory should be preserved. In particular, she stressed the need to record the “full context” in which born-digital records and materials were embedded before being collected and included in specific collections. However, she also highlighted the challenges many memory institutions face due to uneven resource distribution, an issue that may hinders both the development and long-term sustainability of innovative preservation efforts.
Given the richness of the BDCAM25 program, it is incredibly difficult to summarise the many takeaways from the three-day conference. Nevertheless, it is worth highlighting sessions such as the one exploring the history, socio-technical dynamics and research conducted on corpora from platforms such as Usenet; the important reflections stemmed from a study conducted by Rosario Rogel-Salazar and Alan Colín-Arceexploring the presence of feminist organisations in web archives; and the research conducted by Dr Andrea Stanton exploring Palestine and the concept of Palestinian heritage through the analysis of accounts and hashtags on Instagram.
Particularly valuable insights came also from Dr Kieran Hegarty’s paper, which explored the challenges posed by the unpredictable and frequent changes to platform design and policies, underscoring how this significantly influence what is included in web archives and how the material is made available.
Beveridge Hall entrance, Senate House, University of London. Photo taken by B. Cannelli
Overall, the conference provided a valuable opportunity to learn about new research and to network with scholars and practitioners from around the globe. During lunch and coffee breaks, I had insightful conversations with several delegates about the challenges of preserving born-digital materials, particularly data generated on social media platforms. We exchanged ideas and reinforced the importance of developing shared practices to safeguard these resources. This theme strongly resonated in the closing session, which brought together voices from diverse career paths and regions to reflect on the current state of born-digital archives, collections, and memory, and to identify future directions. Among the key takeaways were the need to foster data literacy and building digital citizens from a young age, as well as the importance of connecting with activists and minority communities to help them tell and preserve their stories.
The Archive of John le Carré (David Cornwell) has been further expanded to include an extensive array of the author’s literary papers, personal and professional correspondence, photographs, interviews and articles, and an assortment of personal and family papers. The updated archive (see catalogue here: Collection: Archive of John le Carré (David Cornwell) | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts), available now to readers at the Weston Library, contains over 1,200 boxes of material spanning Cornwell’s entire life and career, from childhood photographs and letters written during his time as a student at Lincoln College, Oxford, to correspondence and book drafts penned in the last few weeks of his life. The archive is a brilliant resource not only for fans of John le Carré and his internationally renowned novels and adaptations, but for researchers interested in British novelists, 20th and 21st century literature, or the spy genre in particular.
Supplementing the hundreds of boxes of Cornwell’s literary papers already in the archive, the newly released material offers an insight into Cornwell’s life as a whole, including and beyond his career as John le Carré. Key moments and experiences throughout his early adulthood, for instance, are represented in detailed correspondence with his first wife Ann and his tutor, mentor and friend Vivian Green (later cited as an important inspiration for the character of George Smiley). These letters provide a window into Cornwell’s student years, his complicated relationships with both his father and new wife, his early jobs as a teacher, aspiring illustrator and – of course – intelligence officer, as well as his first ventures into writing. The hundreds of letters Cornwell wrote to Ann during their relationship in the 1950s and 1960s were often highly personal and detailed, and frequently featured small sketches, as in this letter sent in April 1954 (MS. le Carré 929, folder 2). Further illustrations are scattered throughout the archive: in correspondence with friends and family, decorating novel drafts, and offered as donations to various charities.
Cornwell’s correspondence makes up a significant portion of the archive: letters to and from family, friends, colleagues and fans offer a unique insight into his professional experiences, personal thoughts, and sometimes variable relationships. The vast majority of this correspondence is handwritten, a lifelong preference touched upon in this ‘User’s Manual’ written by Cornwell when joining Penguin in 2009 (MS. le Carré 973, folder 2). He explains, ‘I write all my books by hand. I barely type, but can do one-finger e-mail. Jane & no-one else retypes my handwriting endlessly for me, & is my companion in all literary & professional matters’. As well as reflecting the distinctive way in which Cornwell wrote, this document highlights the essential role played by his second wife Jane, former publicist and foreign rights manager for Hodder & Stoughton. Cornwell goes on to write ‘her word is my word, & usually she’s better at it than I am. So when you get Jane, you are not getting second best, you are getting The One.’ This vital influence is evident throughout the archive, whether in Jane’s annotations across countless novel and letter drafts, the endless manuscripts she was responsible for typing, or David’s notes on almost every document asking ‘Oy’ (her nickname) to make x amendment, contact y person, or decline z invitation. This valuable collaboration is further explored by Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, in his article reflecting on the acquisition of the archive.
The archive includes correspondence with prominent authors, activists and politicians, as well as numerous actors, directors, producers and screenwriters involved in the many successful adaptations of Cornwell’s work. Perhaps most notable among these actors is Sir Alec Guinness, lauded for his portrayal of George Smiley in the 1979 and 1982 television adaptations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People. Amongst a box of correspondence sent between the two from 1978 until Guinness’s death in 2000 are some brilliant letters discussing the prospect of Guinness playing Smiley in the very first television adaptation of a le Carré novel. In response to several pages from Guinness listing concerns regarding his suitability for the role, Cornwell sent this reassuring letter dispelling each one in turn (MS. le Carré 925, folder 1). As well as writing ‘no, you are not rotund or double chinned, though I think I have seen you in rôles where you have, almost as an act of will, acquired a sort of cherubic look!’, he assures Guinness that ‘apart from plumpness, you have all the other physical qualities: a mildness of manner, stretched taut, when you wish it, by an unearthly stillness and an electrifying watchfulness. In the best sense, you are uncomfortable company, as I suspect Smiley is’. This letter evidently had the desired effect: Guinness’s Smiley was an instant success and is still celebrated today. The archive highlights Cornwell’s frequent such involvement in adaptations of his works, assisting casting, script writing, and even appearing in several on-screen cameos.
Understandably, papers specifically relating to Cornwell’s literary works, including manuscript and typescript drafts, lists of edits and corrections, and correspondence with researchers and translators, comprise the majority of the collection. The character and timeline notes for A Perfect Spy pictured below are a classic example of the hundreds of novel notes and drafts in the archive: handwritten, with large chunks completely crossed out, and additions and edits, often in different coloured pens, dotted throughout (MS. le Carré 607, folder 2). Such notes and drafts would often be written in small notebooks, especially during Cornwell’s many research trips, or on pretty much any paper he had to hand, even the endpapers of whichever book he happened to be reading when inspiration struck. This particular example, written on standard A4 paper, sees Cornwell formulating the central characters in A Perfect Spy, father and son Rick and Magnus Pym, a duo based strongly upon the relationship between Cornwell and his own father, Ronnie. The notes refer to ‘Rick’s rachmannism [sic]’, showing obvious parallels even in the book’s early conception to Cornwell’s property dealer father, jailed for fraud and declared bankrupt multiple times.
The archive also extends beyond paper documents, including a great collection of photographs and press cuttings. In addition to the photo at the top of this blog post (MS. le Carré 1196, folder 3), the archive contains portraits of Cornwell taken throughout his life, as well as black and white family photos reaching back generations and photos with his Foreign Office colleagues in the 1960s. The impressive collection of press cuttings, dating from Cornwell’s debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961, also helps to put his work into a wider context. The scrapbook pictured below is filled with press cuttings relating to Cornwell’s first three novels, providing a glimpse into the beginning of his literary career and especially the sudden global success brought by his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (MS. le Carré 1203, folder 1). Quotes from these cuttings, including ‘the spies are not playing Bond-like games: they operate nastily, unspectacularly and with real determination’ and ‘if it is not the best spy yarn I have read, it is certainly the finest anti-spy story’, illustrate the excitement surrounding this completely new style of spy novel.
