The Great Fire of London
On this day 350 years ago – 2nd September 1666 – began the Great Fire of London, which burned for three days, consuming 13,000 houses, […]
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Letters from Civil War America
The Royal Commonwealth Society collections have just added an on-line catalogue entry for a fascinating series of letters written from Civil War America by Edward […]
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Books of Hours at Cambridge University Library
Within its holdings of well over 450 illuminated manuscripts, Cambridge University Library possesses some 45 Books of Hours. As books designed for personal use within […]
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“The beauty of expression”: M.R. James and the First World War Memorial Scroll
The War Reserve collection in the University Library, initiated by Librarian Francis Jenkinson, contains a wealth of interesting things for the military researcher, ranging from […]
Continue reading »Manuscripts Image of the Month – a sixteenth-century Book of Hours?
At first glance, it looks like a French Book of Hours made in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century: it is written in humanistic […]
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Training of Electrical Engineers – how it was done in 1894
A very interesting process called electrification occurred in Britain and other countries from mid-1880 until around 1950. This process included the changeover from line shafts […]
Continue reading »Poems and Ballads at 150
This summer marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (1866) which appalled Victorian readers with its anti-authoritarianism, republicanism […]
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The History and Conservation of the John Weekley Changi Archives
The Changi project team have finished a major conservation challenge, the archives of John Weekley. In this post John Cardwell, Project Archivist and Emma Nichols, […]
Continue reading »Manuscripts Image of the Month – Spirit Drawings of Anna Mary Howitt
The latter half of the nineteenth century saw a rise in interest in Spiritualism, the belief that the spirits of the dead can, and indeed […]
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Live tweeting the first day of the Somme from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon
The diaries of Siegfried Sassoon which are held in Department of Manuscripts and Archives are a unique and fascinating resource for both historians and literary […]
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