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  • Title
    British Council Collection of Correspondence and Reports
  • Reference
    MS 5118
  • Production date
    1960-2001
  • Creator
  • Creator History
    The British Council is the United Kingdom?s public diplomacy and cultural organisation. Part of its work is to send British writers on trips abroad in order to help international artistic understanding.
  • Scope and Content
    Correspondence between 183 British and Irish writers and the British Council together with reports of visits and other miscellaneous papers. Includes material from Brian Aldiss (11 letters, 1 report 1987-1994); Alan Brownjohn (11 letters, 2 reports 1988-1992); Margaret Drabble (14 letters, 10 related correspondence, 1 report 1976-1994); T.S. Eliot (3 letters, 1963); William Golding (16 letters, 6 related correspondence, 1 report 1986-1992); Graham Greene ( 3 letters 1982-1988); Michael Holroyd (5 letters, 1 report 1988-1992); Iris Murdoch (30 letters, 3 related correspondence 1978-1993); Stephen Spender (8 letters, 2 related correspondence 1963-1992); Julian Symons (11 letters, 1 postcard, 1 related correspondence, 1 report 1987-1994); Anthony Thwaite (5 letters, poems, 2 reports 1988-1996); Arnold Wesker (13 letters 1972-1993). There are also documents (carbons and photocopies) relating to the illness and death in Vienna of the poet and British Council employee Bernard Spencer, sent to the British Council on behalf of Roger Bowen of the University of Arizona, who was preparing a biography.
  • Extent
    6 boxes
  • Language
    English
  • Level of description
    fonds
  • Content person
  • Conditions governing access
    30 year closure from date of creation; permission required from both Literary Executor and the British Council
  • Archival history
    Incorporates MS 3478: letters and reports from British and Irish writers deposited in June 1989; E.M. Forster - manuscript page from an early draft of "A Passage to India", with a note of authentication initialled by Forster, which was found in the British Council offices in Rome; MS 3441; MS 2659 - letters extracted from British Council files, 1955-1980; and material deposited since 1989