The rise and popularity of graphic novels cannot be underestimated and offer numerous opportunities for student learning.
Most significantly the power of the medium has reached the upper echelons of the literary world. Sabrina, a graphic novel by Nick Drnaso exploring ideas of grief and loss along side indoctrination, was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times and The Guardian both have dedicated webpages for graphic publications. In these forums comics and graphics novels are celebrated, criticised and explored. Distinction between the two forms are often a point of confusion, understanding of which may be a sign of being in or out of relevant communities. Here though, divergence between the forms is not significantly important. What we have is a rich opportunity to embrace the medium, ride on growing popularity and give our students opportunities for personal development.
I’ve always been a fan of TinTin, his adventures to far flung places absorbed me as a child. My interest in the Middle East, on reflection probably influenced to some extent by TinTin, lead to some time living in Jerusalem. Describing the city is a challenge, while you may be able to pin some words to the major sights, daily experiences are often beyond any lexicon. I had no way of explaining my feelings, emotions and complexity of life in the city. Until I read Jerusalem by Guy Delisle, he captured the city and its nuance. He effectively communicates the way in which communities interact, daily wonders and the bazaar which are only every seen in Jerusalem. This book became my main recommendation to all who asked ‘how’s life?’. Where my words failed Delisle’s pictures could respond. This book is now what I call my ‘gateway graphic’. Overwhelmed by the accuracy and nuance of Delisle’s work I fell deep into the world of graphic novels. What a wonderful world it is.
The use of graphic novels/comics in education has been explored in relation to Shakespeare
and in Holocaust work.The use of this graphic methods in social research is a growing field. The opportunity to use graphic novels in our university classrooms are also numerous. I am looking forward to using them in my coming seminars and using them to support student learning. Recent additions to the library collection have been catalogued in relation to their theme, for example Freedom Hospital in Civil Conflict, rather than in Art. This offers opportunity to further explore the potential value and impact of graphic material in students learning.
The developing interest in graphic novels is an opportunity that should not be missed. Visit the University of York Library collections webpage to check out the graphic novel titles we currently have available.
To celebrate the 55th anniversary of Doctor Who, we asked Teaching & Learning Advisor and self-confessed 'Doctor Who bore' Stephanie Jesper to write something that would highlight the Who-related content within our collections. Here's what she came up with:
Five hours, 16 minutes and 20 seconds (or thereabouts) into the afternoon of Saturday 23rd November 1963, sightings were reported across the country of…
“...an upward shooting probe, similar in a schematic way to conventional representations of space craft taking off. But this upward probe immediately broke up and tilted over to merge with forward rushing ‘clouds’...” (Tulloch & Alvarado, 1983; p.21).
What was this mysterious probe, observed on that November evening 55 years ago? And what, if anything, did it have to do with the disappearance, that same night, of a teenage girl and two teachers from their East London school? Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright's testimony following their sudden London 1965 reappearance (without pupil Susan Foreman) only served to further fuel speculation that the observed probe and the disappearances were the result of an alien abduction. But surely such claims are nonsense?
According to Barbara and Ian's testimony, they had been concerned about the welfare of schoolgirl Susan Foreman, and had followed her home only to discover that home was an old police-box in the I.M. Foreman scrapyard at 76 Totter's Lane, Shoreditch. This police-box, they claimed, was actually a spaceship (they called it the TARDIS) capable of travel through time, and both Susan and her grandfather, who they referred to as the Doctor (Doctor who??), were aliens: wanderers in the fourth dimension. Terrified of being discovered, this Doctor character abducted the teachers. But he was unable to steer his spacecraft reliably, and Ian and Barbara were only able to return to London 1965 by stealing another time-ship -- which they then destroyed.
Inevitably, this testimony has met with a good deal of suspicion. But those mysterious sights on that Saturday evening have leant credence to their story, and there is a growing contingent who claim that this was indeed a genuine alien abduction. They point to a number of other cases of suspected alien activity throughout the 1970s or 1980s, most of which they believe to have been fended off by an organisation called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce). UNIT have been keen to dismiss these alien activity theories, claiming their role is purely humanitarian. In an attempt to assuage further speculation regarding the 1963 incident, they have released the following footage, pieced together from recordings made at the time:
It is UNIT's position that the events of 23rd November 1963 were not an alien abduction at all, but instead nothing more than a BBC Drama production: a television series preposterously entitled 'Doctor Who'. Yet nobody I've spoken to has heard of this show. What evidence can we find to support their ridiculous claim?
I started with a YorSearch search for this 'Doctor Who' moniker. There are 10 books on the shelves that claim to be about this supposed television programme. Most of them are in the section 'LP' on the second floor of the main Library. Here they are, between Desperate Housewives and EastEnders:
There's also a load of articles available online... almost 500 of them. Are these texts an elaborate UNIT hoax designed to put us off the scent? In search of answers, I did some reading.
It's the claim of these books and articles that on 23rd November 1963 BBC Television aired the first episode of this 'Doctor Who' thing. But the details they give regarding this broadcast are fanciful to the limits of credibility: the programme was produced by a 28-year-old woman, which would make her the youngest producer at the BBC, and the only female producer, at that time; as this Music thesis in White Rose eTheses Online explains, the haunting theme music was realised by a 26-year-old woman and her pet oscillators: Wobbulator and Jason; its director was both British-Indian and gay... These are levels of representation uncommon now, let alone in the early 1960s! The whole thing seems too fantastical to believe.
If this series was actually broadcast, there must be some record of it in BBC Genome. I looked. There is. There was also stuff turning up in the newspaper archives we have access to. The evidence was mounting. And yet I kept asking around and nobody I talked to had any recollection of ever seeing such a programme. Something didn't seem right. I needed to witness this supposed show with my own eyes. I turned to Box of Broadcasts, and this is what I found: not just one episode of 'Doctor Who', but almost 200!
Working my way through the playlist I'd created, it started to seem like UNIT were right: this was nothing but a television series, albeit an amazing one! Barbara and Ian weren't missing teachers in real life, but well-written characters undergoing genuine development as they traveled to the future, the past, and sideways through time with their irascible alien captor and his granddaughter. Even this Doctor himself changed across the course of the series, on occasion dramatically so. He had been recast multiple times, sometimes replaced with a younger actor, and (I discovered as I skipped to the end of the playlist) now he was even being played by a woman! Yes, this could only be a television programme.
As well as all these episodes on Box of Broadcasts, three series on DVD, and a few clips and episodes on BFI Screen Online, there were scripts at MA 192.9 DAV including one volume which included email and text conversations about the production of the series. With all this evidence mounting up, how could anyone doubt the claim that Doctor Who was a television series that had been going for 55 years (albeit with a big gap between 1989 and 2005 punctured only by a TV movie and a couple of charity comedy skits)?
It wasn't until I was reading Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text that the scales fell from my eyes. Here's the section in question:
“What Elam calls the semiotic ‘thickness’ (multiple codes) of a performed text varies according to the ‘redundancy’ (high predictability) of ‘auxiliary’ performance codes.” (Tulloch & Alvarado, 1983; p.249).
Now some might see this to be a statement about how the codes and conventions of other genres are used in Doctor Who to add new layers of meaning: how the Doctor and his/her companions travel not only to periods in time but to different genres... different television programmes. A historical adventure is an adventure in a costume drama, not merely in the past; the TARDIS travels not from time to time but from channel to channel; it's not an adventure in time and space but an adventure in your television.
And yet I recognised this sentence. I recognised it from an episode of the Doctor Who serial "Dragonfire":
“Tell me -- what are your views on the assertion that the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes?” (Briggs, I., 1987; p.65).
Yes... This 'series' was even having adventures within its own critical media. It brought to mind the 1968 serial "The Mind Robber", in which the TARDIS crew find themselves in a world of literature devised by the creator of a boys' own adventure character called Captain Jack Harkaway... A name surprisingly close to another Doctor Who character: Captain Jack Harkness. It seemed to me that the boundaries between reality and fiction were melting. I no-longer felt I knew what was real anymore and what was make-believe.
As I lay on one of the Fairhurst settees, confused and befuddled, with a freshly made mug of tea by my side, I was approached by a mysterious character with a Scottish accent who addressed herself to me as 'Miss Why' (unquestionably a pseudonym). She offered me the choice of two jelly-babies — one red and one blue — and whispered: "All I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more. You take the blue jelly-baby – the story ends; you wake up in your bed and believe that this 'Doctor Who' thing is just a telly show. You take the red jelly-baby – you come to Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
Now I know one should never take sweeties from strangers, but on this occasion the temptation of a juicy red jelly-baby was simply too much. I thanked the mysterious woman and bit the head off the red jelly-baby with relish. 'Miss Why' then stuck the blue one in her own gob and grinned wildly, before taking my hand and leading me to a door I'd never noticed before.
What I saw beyond that door you would scarcely believe. The room that lay behind it was huuuuge! I had no idea the Fairhurst was so extensive. I couldn't make sense of whereabouts in the building we must've been. But then we weren't in the building. We were in a dimensionally transcendent space-time vehicle!
My jaw dropped with the realisation. At the centre of the room, what looked like a perspex column with a colander inside rose up and down, accompanied by a wheezing groaning sound. We were in flight.
"Where are we going?", I asked.
'Miss Why', clearly another incarnation of the Doctor under a far from opaque pseudonym, explained it all: she was a renegade Time Lord who'd escaped her home planet of Gallifrey (in the constellation of Kasterborous) with a device they called The Matrix: a massive computer system that acts as the repository of the combined knowledge of her people — kind of like White Rose Research Online. But this Matrix was capable of recording all the events taking place within and around any TARDIS ship, which meant that every adventure of every Time Lord (the Doctor included) was retained therein. The DVDs on our shelves in the John Barry Audiovisual collection; the episodes on Box of Broadcasts — these weren't television; these were Matrix recordings which UNIT had somehow managed to get hold of and edit into regular 25 minute episodes as a ridiculously convoluted way of covering up alien activity: alien artifacts actually being used to distract us from the aliens... it was the perfect deception!
"So why has no-one ever heard of this 'Doctor Who' programme?", I asked.
"Because I've altered time, silly!", the strange Scottish woman replied, hooking the bamboo handle of a large umbrella around one of the ship's controls and letting it carry her weight that she might arc, gracefully, towards me.
I gulped. There was something about the way she was acting now that seemed a little more sinister than I'd expected of the Doctor. I began to wish I'd not skipped to the end of that BoB playlist, but watched everything on it lest it would've given me some sort of clue.
"I've taken that pesky Doctor out of things entirely," she smirked, head lolling to one side. "The time streams just take a little while to correct themselves. Especially in York. Nothing ever changes very quickly in York."
"That's why there was still physical evidence here in the Library?"
"Who's a little clever-clogs?", she chuckled, prodding me in the forehead.
I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. There had been a series called 'Doctor Who' but it was actually snippets of real-life events recorded to an alien repository. These had been intercepted by UNIT and broadcast as fiction in order to discredit claims of alien activity on Earth (including the exploits of the Doctor). And now this intervention (or certain parts of it) had been unpicked by the woman standing in front of me... just a few inches in front of me. And now I knew everything that had gone on. Well, not everything, but a fair bit... A dangerous proportion! If huge swathes of television broadcasting could be unwritten, then surely so could I!
And yet it had not entirely been unwritten. It was still here. In York. Protected by those ancient walls. And now I also began to feel it in my head: I could feel memories I'd forgot I'd had, lurking at the back of my mind... sleeping. I knew I had to wake them up: to bring them back in front of my eyes. I had... to remember... 'Doctor Who'... Not just the episodes I'd seen on Box of Broadcasts. Not just the stuff I'd read in the books. No. I had seen it all. I had seen Doctor Who! I remembered! Human-sized moth creatures, Yetis on the underground, great big maggots, standing stones that could drink blood, massive pink snakes, walking plants, cat people, some bloke who always liked to dress for the occasion (not sure what that was about), flatulent bodysnatchers, tig-playing statues, lizard people, a kid under a blanket... My mind raced with these recollections!
I looked at the woman stood in front of me: Missy. It was Missy — The Master — the Doctor's greatest enemy-slash-friend. I spoke as boldly as I could: "You can take the girl out of York, but you can't take York out of the girl!" I must confess, I didn't know where I was going with this, but I felt strangely confident that whatever ancient forces had protected York from the timeline interference were now also protecting me.
Missy scowled at me, and was just about to say something really scathing when she faded out of existence. York was refusing to be rewritten, and my presence in that time machine was causing some sort of interference. I felt peculiar and stretched my arm out to the control console to steady myself. As I made contact with the panel, a huge jolt of energy surged through me, and the console sparked with a brilliant green flash.
What happened after that, I don't know. My body had decided that this would be a convenient point in the plot for it to fall unconscious...
I was awoken by the strangest sensation at my ear: a sort of gentle hissing and light nibbling. I opened my eyes, tentatively, but all I could see was the blue of the sky. Blinking, I peered at whatever was prodding at my ear. It was a tiny duck.
"SUB-JECT IS A-LIVE!" came a tin voice from my left. I snapped my head around to see a small robot rocking from side to side. I sat up, somewhat bewildered, and took in my surroundings. Me, the robot, and the duck were all on the Fairhurst lawn. In the distance, one of the local rabbits was chewing at a dock leaf.
The duck leapt onto my lap, shook out her wings, and clapped her bill a few times in various directions in quick succession. "Hi," I said, for want of any better response. "Good afternoon!" the duck replied, in a quacky sort of way.
Then a curious gent with a pleasant open face appeared in my peripheral vision. There was something familiar about that face. "Doctor...?" I asked, quietly.
He chuckled. "J.B. Morrell, at your service. As ever I am..."
He proffered a hand towards me. I took it to shake it, but instead he helped me up off the ground. The duck flapped down to the ground and stood with the robot at the man's feet.
"I took the liberty of restoring the time streams as they had been before any 'unfortunate' interventions took place. I hope that wasn't an impertinence on my part?"
"Far from it!" I assured him. I looked about to check that everything was where I thought it should be. It was. "But how...?"
J.B. Morrell pointed towards the building that bears his name. "Good Library, that. There's more knowledge in there than you'd think. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the out."
"You mean with all the online resources as well as the physical stock?" I asked, naïvely.
He chuckled again. "If you like; if you like!" And then he walked away, the duck flapping merrily behind him. The robot turned its head. "Come along, Java!" called J.B. Morrell, and the robot rolled away after him, across the grass.
Absently, I looked over at the Library buildings, and suddenly remembered that somewhere in there my tea was getting cold. I turned back to thank J.B. Morrell and his friends, but, inevitably, they were nowhere to be seen. I dusted myself off, took a deep breath of fresh air, and headed back inside the Library, resolving to check that all the Doctor Who stuff I'd seen in there before was still there now. It's something I urge you to check too. Just in case. You never know when someone might try to tamper with history again...
The current exhibition in the cases in the Harry Fairhurst corridor at the University of York Library tells the story of the road to Indian independence. The exhibition uses books and archives from the university’s collections and themes include the relationship between coloniser and colonised, and Indian literature. Highlights include a telegram from Gandhi, and books that belonged to former Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The exhibition will remain in the cases until the end of March 2018.
Alex Jubb worked on the India project as an intern in 2017 and has written several blogs (Aug 2017#1)(Aug 2017#2)(Jan 2018) (Feb 2018) about the collection and the history of the Independence movement. Here he examines the role women played in the Indian Independence.
Role of women in the Indian Independence Movement
An often-untold story
of the Indian independence movement is that of the role of influential Indian
women; whilst stories of Gandhi, the nationalist writer Raja Rao and other
important male political and cultural figureheads are commonplace, members of
the opposite gender are rarely taught about in the history of Indian
independence. Indian women were not only working to gain independence for their
nation, but were seeking enfranchisement and political representation in the
local, national, and international spheres. It is clear that one of the most
important aspects of the movement for independence from a historical point of
view is that it saw mass participation by women; women who had till then been
confined to the domestic sphere.
Women were involved in diverse nationalist activities, both within and outside the home. Within the home women held classes to educate other women and contributed significantly to nationalist literature in the form of articles, poems and propaganda material. Moreover, shelter and nursing care were also provided to nationalist leaders who were in hiding from the British authorities. Furthermore, and most importantly, when the nationalist leadership were in jail, the women took over the leadership roles and provided guidance to the movement. The JB Morrell Library at the University of York holds many important works written by leading female members of the Indian nationalist movement, in addition to works from Indian women from every class in society.
Female nationalist authors did not let up in
their campaign for further empowerment following the granting of independence. The
Bride’s Book of Beauty, written by Mulk Raj Anand and Krishna Nehru Hutheesing, was
published in Bombay in 1947. The work served almost as an anthological manual
on ‘feminine
sensibilities, formulas of female beauty, and female social experience’. One critic described the work as the
manifestation of ‘Anand’s affinities with Marxist utopian notions
of egalitarian civilisation and women’s
empowerment’. The authors
developed a perception of Indian female beauty that was adorned with poetry,
prose, folktales and myths. [There is a copy in the exhibition]. It was clear
that Anand and Hutheesing saw independence as a springboard with which to
further the rights of Indian women. Using the very same myths and folklore that
were crucial to creating a nationalist fervour prior to independence in 1947
was essential to Anand and Hutheesing’s
writings.
Savitri Devi Nanda
was the author of ‘The City of Two Gateways: The Autobiography of
an Indian Girl’;
Nanda writes every detail of her early life in a typical Hindu aristocratic
family of the pre-partition Punjab. This is an important work that brings to
life the beliefs of many young Indian women both before and after partition.
For example, Nanda writes that one night her father took her
to Lahore to put her in a school; neither her mother nor her grandmother was in
favour of educating her. It was this thirst for freedom and knowledge that was
encountered in the young female nationalists and marked a distinct difference
and a remarkable gulf between this generation and the previous generations
before them. Where Nanda excels is in describing her sense of loss or
separation; this stemmed directly from her strong awareness that she was an
active participant to the exciting events of the national struggle for freedom.
The current exhibition to be found in the cases in the Harry Fairhurst corridor at the University of York Library tells the story of the road to Indian independence. The exhibition uses books and archives from the university’s collections and themes include the relationship between coloniser and colonised, and Indian literature. Highlights include a telegram from Gandhi, and books that belonged to former Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The exhibition will remain in the cases until the end of March 2018.
Alex Jubb worked on the India project as an intern in 2017 and has written several blogs (Aug 2017#1)(Aug 2017#2)(Jan 2018) about the collection and the history of the Independence movement. Here he examines the theme of Indian literature in more depth.
Indian Nationalism
Image: Commemorative Postage Stamp (1967), India Security Press. http://www.istampgallery.com/quit-india-movement/
The movement to free India from British rule manifested itself through a variety of different mediums. Indian poets, writers and artists provided the inspiration to many ordinary Indians to develop sympathies towards the nationalist cause, particularly as the twentieth century progressed. It became obvious to political commentators of the early twentieth century that there was very little in the way of a unifying identity amongst the peoples of India. In addition to the many political and economic works published to aid the nationalist cause, both inside and outside India, scholars that have studied the causes of Indian independence in 1947 believed that by the 1920s and 1930s, literature had come to occupy a central role in the Indian nationalist movement.
Image sourced from India Online http://bit.ly/2C41OUg
Raja Rao, an Indian novelist who participated in the Quit India Movement of 1942, was the prime mover in the formation of a cultural organisation, Sri Vidya Samiti, devoted to reviving the values of ancient Indian civilisation. Although deemed a failure by many, his nationalist beliefs were clearly reflected in his first two books; ‘Kanthapura’, an account of the impact of Gandhi’s teaching on peaceful resistance against the British, was followed by ‘The Serpent and the Rope’; the serpent being illusion and the rope being the reality of independence. Rao borrowed the style and structure form Indian vernacular tales and epic fold stories. Rao’s winning of both the third and second highest civilian awards in India following independence signified the impact Rao had on Indian nationalist thinking. According to Ulna Anjaria, a modern day historian of pre-independence India and Pakistan, ‘Indian writers of literature began to imagine cultural unity through their fictional and poetic works’. It is clear that she was correct in her assumption.
Whilst words on a page inspired many Indians to strive for independence, the role played by artists skilled enough to conjure up great nationalist imagery in their works can surely not be understated. Indian artists sought to maintain an ‘Indianness’ representative of their newly independent nation. It became clear that, as Rebecca Brown describes, an ‘emergence of a self-conscience Indian modernism’. Post-independence art showed the influence of Western styles, but was often inspired by Indian themes and images. One particular group, the Progressive Artists’ Group, was established shortly after independence and was intended to establish new ways of expressing India in the post-colonial era. Most of the major artists of India in the 1950s were associate with the group, and the Indian ethos was further cemented by these influential artists and painters.
Moreover, a further aspect of Indian culture that the newly independent nation states sought to use to break from their colonial past was architecture. Shortly after independence in 1947, India employed Le Corbusier (a Swiss-French pioneer of modern architecture) to design Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab. The American architect Louis Kahn was invited to design the capitol complex at Dhaka (the modern-day capital of Bangladesh). Indian architects developed a revivalist style of bold architectural gestures, anchored in India’s past, particularly as they planned the Ashok Hotel and the Vigyan Bhavan Conference Centre in New Delhi. Seeking alternative visions after independence through foreign expertise, meaning anything not made by British hands, became a main priority for the new leaders of both India and Pakistan.
Independence was not simply brought about by the work of politicians, economics and those in power in Britain, India and Pakistan; the works of cultural leaders meant just as much to Indian nationalists across the continent. The works of many of these individuals can be found within the Library at the University of York. These works contributed to the cementing of a strong, unified Indian identity both before independence and in the following decades. Nationalist works, for many ordinary Indians, mean just as much in the modern era as they did at the turn of 1947.
There is scarcely a name more recognisable in the history of India than that of Mahatma Gandhi.
Image used courtesy of biography.com, under a Creative Commons Attribution only licence.
Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule and ‘father of India’, famously led Indians in challenging British rule wherever possible and he was a crucial component of the Indian movement for independence. However, independence came at a price; January 30 of this year marks the seventieth anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Nathuram Vinayak Godse.
The Borthwick Archives holds two original pieces of correspondence from the man himself. The first, a 1931 telegram and letter between Irwin and Gandhi about the selection of Dr Ansari for the Round Table Conference. The second was another letter between Irwin and Gandhi, this time from 1934. The Round Table Conferences were a series of conferences organised by the British Government to discuss constitutional reforms in India. They emerged as a result of the continued demand for Indian self-rule and the fervent belief by many British politicians that India needed to move towards dominion status.
The opening of the first plenary session of the Round Table Conference. Image used courtesy of The Hindu Archives, courtesy of a Creative Commons Attribution only licence.
Telegram from Gandhi to Irwin about the selection of Dr Ansari for the Round Table Conference. July 1931. Borthwick Archives: HALIFAX/A4/410/2/51.
Dr Ansari was a fellow Indian nationalist and former president of the Indian National Congress; Ansari was a close follower of Gandhi’s teachings and, unsurprisingly, the letter comprises of Gandhi's attempts to persuade Irwin of the positive impact Ansari could have on the Conference proceedings. Gandhi’s correspondent was the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, from 1926 to 1931. In his final year as Viceroy, Irwin invited Gandhi to Britain to have a series of meetings together. By the time of the Second Round Table Conference, a settlement between Gandhi and Irwin (imaginatively titled the Gandhi-Irwin Pact) was reached that meant Gandhi was appointed as the sole representative of the Congress to the Conference. Gandhi himself claimed that this Congress alone represented political India. However, Gandhi could not reach agreements in areas such as Muslim representation and safeguards, and the fact that Untouchables were Hindus and should be treated as such. Whilst he returned to India empty handed following the Conference, his work in Britain led him to resolve many of the issues with the 1932 Poona Pact; a Pact stating that the treatment of untouchables as a minority separate from the rest of the Hindu community was entirely
unjust.
It was to be the pre-premiership Clement Attlee that was one of the main British proponents of Indian independence after the Round Table Conferences had concluded. Attlee was an individual with close ties to the University of York, as shown in recent research undertaken in conjunction with the Borthwick archives. Whilst the three round-table conferences between 1930 and 1932 achieved little in reality, Attlee continued their initial work as a member of a new joint committee on India. Attlee's interest in Indian independence began in earnest following the Simon Commission of 1927; a group of British MPs under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon and assisted by Attlee himself. Attlee toured India with the Commission in 1927 and 1928 in order to study and report back on India's constitutional progress for introducing the constitutional reforms that had been promised by the British government.
Clement Attlee. Image used courtesy of The Robinson Library, courtesy of a Creative Commons Attribution only licence.
Attlee’s donation of works to the University contained many important primary and secondary sources detailing the history of Indian independence. Attlee donated works such as a biography of Gandhi from 1958, numerous histories of the Indian nationalist movements, and publications from Socialists and Communist groups in both Britain and India. Attlee’s devotion to the Indian cause can clearly be seen through the scope of his donations to the new University of York in the early 1960s. Attlee became the Labour party expert on India in the 1930s, and during the Second World War he was given charge of Indian affairs. It really was to be no surprise that Prime Minister Attlee orchestrated the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.
In the second of his two blog posts regarding the IPUP internship, Alex Jubb tells us more about Clement Attlee's Indian Books.
There is certainly an air of mystery surrounding Clement Attlee's relationship with the University of York. The presence of books donated by Attlee reflects two major questions; why did he have these books in the first place? And secondly, how have they ended up in the University's collection? The internship, brought about by the seventieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, has contributed to bringing both Attlee's involvement in the early history of the University to the surface, in addition to the wider knowledge of the accessions book; a source rarely known about outside of the Rare Books Department within the University.
Attlee's interest in Indian and Pakistani affairs was recognised by a great number of Indian authors. He had been a member of a number of influential commissions, including the Indian Statutory Commission between 1928 and 1934, and later became the expert on India within the Labour Party. During the Second World War Attlee was placed in charge of Indian Affairs, setting up the Cripps Mission in 1942 in an attempt to bring all the various factions within India together. As a result of this wealth of experience, Attlee played a crucial role in ultimately bringing about the independence of both states. It soon became obvious through many of the inscriptions in works personally donated by Attlee to the University that the ex-Prime Minister was a greatly admired, clearly knowledgeable individual who was seen as a man who could provide patronage to works on the subject of India and Pakistan. Authors such as Bhagavan Das, MM Aslan Khan, and S Rawachaudra Rau, in addition to organisations such as the Anglo-Indian Association based in London, made hand-written notes to Attlee himself within many of the works. Das, in his 1934 work Ancient versus Modern “Scientific Socialism”, wrote to Attlee to ask for a review of the aforementioned work. This can be seen in the image below;
The inscription in Ancient Versus Modern "Scientific Socialism'"by Bhagavan Das.
In Rawachaudra Rau's case he forwarded on to Attlee his late father's 1912 work, K Srinivasu-Rau's The Crisis in India, stating that; 'For favour of noble acceptance by Major C. R. Attlee MP this work is presented in fulsome loyalty and devotion' (see the image below). This could be evidence for the respect for Attlee from authors of Indian affairs. Moreover, whilst the Anglo-Indian Association donated a work to Attlee from their offices in London, Attlee received many works from the Indian sub-continent itself. For example, Aslan Khan's analytical work 'Safeguards in the New Indian Bill' arrived on Attlee's desk all the way from Lahore.
The inscription in The Crisis in India by K Srinivasa Rau
The second question is clearly; how have these works ended up in the University's collections? The University had sent out a call to institutions and individuals across the country and as a result there were a series of generous donations of books between 1961 and 1963. During these years, the University had been announced but was not officially open until 1963. The founding of the University of York and other universities of the same period, was a definite factor in receiving these donations. Socialist and Labour politicians such as Attlee appreciated and valued new universities as they provided education for a greatly increased number of potential students; 'education for all' being a key feature in the vocabulary of the majority of left-leaning politicians.
However, it is unclear what were the other driving forces behind the donation of these works. John Bew, the author of the most recent biography of Attlee, assumes that one possibility is that Violet Attlee, Clement’s wife, donated these books as the family was moving to a smaller home with less space for a vast library. The dates in which these works were logged in the accessions book all fell in August of 1962; Violet Attlee passed away in 1964, and Clement Attlee died in 1967. He was increasingly frail as the 1960s wore on, but in 1962 he did give two speeches in the House of Lords; he was very much still capable of enacting his political beliefs both in and out of Westminster, but was certainly in less good health than he had ever previously been. The latest possible date for these documents to have been donated would clearly be in 1962 with the logged date evidenced in the accessions book. The Attlee of the early 1960s would possibly have still been capable of donating these works, as well as also deciding which works to donate and which ones to keep within his collection. Documents that would support this theory have yet to be uncovered, and it is the accessions book that is the main piece of evidence for Attlee's contributions.
After correspondence with the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Attlee's biographers, the mystery has only grown exponentially. In the correspondence with the Bodleian, the Superintendent for the Library’s Special Collections stated that; 'in keeping, perhaps, with his [Attlee's] seemingly quiet and methodical nature, he did not routinely keep personal correspondence … the collection we [the Bodleian] have is very much a collection of governmental and official documents'. The Bodleian holds the mainstay of manuscripts relating to Attlee, so the mystery would continue.
Clement Attlee's bookplate, found in
many of the works.
What is also interesting is that the collection of mid-twentieth century Indian works have been greatly
supplemented by major gifts from the Riddy family in 2008. Felicity Riddy was an academic at the University of York between 1988 and 2007, becoming the Vice-Chancellor in 2000. She is a specialist in late-medieval English and Scottish Literature, whereas her husband John had 'made his mark as a book collector, and built up a much-admired private library on the history of British India… once the largest of its kind in private hands'. He was known to give lectures and wrote articles illuminating various aspects of Indian history. The Riddys can also be found in the very same accessions book within the Borthwick Library, having gifted even more works than Attlee did himself. This project highlighting twentieth century Indian works within the University has accompanied the continued employment and recruitment of specialists in all departments within the University; specialists in fields such as Indian and Pakistani affairs, global and transnational history, in addition to scholars of worldwide independence movements following examples of de-colonisation in the twentieth century.
There is undoubtedly a great amount of scope for more research to be done in the particular field. The accessions book holds many hidden secrets; Attlee personally donated hundreds of works, to the University of York and this placement has only served to highlight those works relating to the independence movements of both India and Pakistan. A full programme of research into the accessions book will certainly be useful to create a greater level of understanding of the history of the Morrell Library.
There are plenty of sources still to find, and plenty of manuscripts still to uncover within the University’s archives to unearth the mysteries that have arisen as a result of this internship.
The information gathered during this internship will be used to enhance catalogue records making it easier for researchers to identify Attlee donations. For more information please contact the Rare Books Librarian sarah.griffin@york.ac.uk.
All photos by Alex Jubb.
In the first of two posts to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence, Alex Jubb explains how his internship led to him learning about the Library's collection of books once owned by Clement Attlee.
This will be the first of two blogs written about an internship undertaken with the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP). The first post will discuss how this internship came about, the first stages of the internship, and the internship's successes. The second post will develop the narrative that I have unearthed whilst progressing through the internship.
The accessories book, available in the Borthwick
Archives, open on just one of the many
pages of Attlee's donations
Every summer, IPUP offer part-time internships 'intended to give graduate History students an
opportunity to develop their skills, experience and CVs in various employment contexts.' I was lucky enough to be offered an internship closely associated with the History Department and the University Library's Special Collections. The University Library holds a vast array of hidden wonders within its collections; many of which are catalogued without copy specific details, leaving these particular books difficult to locate even if an avid historian tries to find them on the University's databases. Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom immediately following the end of the Second World War, donated many books to the Library in the early 1960s. Attlee was one of the most important figures in orchestrating the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. As a result of this, in his vast collection of books he had obtained many works on Indian and Pakistani affairs. Attlee donated over 100 of these works to the Library, and I was to play a role in finding these works on the Library's shelves, listing them, and ensuring that they are widely advertised and explored thoroughly by other researchers, not just myself through improved catalogue records, and promotion via social media and exhibitions. This was primarily because this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Indian Independence Act, and is fresh on the minds of many eminent scholars and historians.
It is only known that these works originally belonged to Attlee through the exploration of the University's 'Accessions Book'; a book detailing all of the books, articles and other items donated to the Library over a two year period between 1961 and 1963. I spent a day working with this book in the Borthwick Reading Room, transferring the data from the book onto an electronic spreadsheet. It soon became obvious that there was minimal detail on the accessions book, and from a quick search of several of the books using 'Yorsearch', the University of York's online catalogue, it soon became evident that these details were also missing from the online catalogue. Publishers were missing, first names of many authors were missing, and the title of the book and date of publication were often incomplete. To the outside world, and to most within the University itself, there was no indication that these were donated by Attlee. Only the accessions book had this crucial information. This lack of information was initially quite worrying, but a day spent collating all of the relevant works from the accessions book allowed me to 'fill in the gaps'. This was a long and arduous process, but one that will be of use to future researchers of Attlee and the independence stories of India and Pakistan. Many of these works have authorial inscriptions to Attlee, Attlee's family crest and bookplate, and other notations made by Attlee himself. These works are not known to scholars and biographers of Attlee, and by sharing the database of these works that I have now created it is hoped that this information will soon be out in the public domain via the online catalogue.
The accessories book, held in the Borthwick Archives, showing Attlee's donations.
This new research into Attlee's donations will also lend itself to the creation of an exhibition within the University Library. This exhibition will showcase several of the books that have been researched, and will be the first step to bringing Attlee's relationship with the University to life.
Clement Attlee with his instantly
recognisable smoking pipe
Being given the chance to work alongside both Sarah Griffin, the Rare Books and York Minster Librarian, and Mark Jenner, one of the University's Research Champions and also a Reader in Early Modern History, has certainly been something that I have really appreciated. The works that I have looked at within this internship were initially unknown to me, but I now have a much clearer understanding of the immense wealth of material that the University has within its collection. A simple use of the Library catalogue might highlight the location of a particular book but, at present, it is not always possible to tell via this method just how important an individual the book belonged to. This opportunity has been something that I have relished; it has provided me with inspiration for future avenues of research, and invaluable experience of working within the Special Collections Department of an academic institution. Not only will this be of great use in future when I am searching for jobs and deciding which career path to follow, but has provided me with a newfound set of skills; I am now confident in working on a project where the narrative has not been created and is not necessarily easy to come across. The second part of this blog will discuss the 'narrative' and story of Attlee's donations to the University, particularly focusing on his relationship with India and Pakistan. This relationship can be told through the information within the accessions book and Attlee's donated works, and the story is an interesting one indeed.
Photo of Clement Attlee used under a Creative Commons licence from Wikimedia Commons. All other photos taken by Alex Jubb.
David Moon, Anniversary Professor in History, looks back at the career of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II in custody at a palace outside Petrograd after
his abdication via: Library of Congress Prints
On 15 March 1917 (according to the western calendar) Tsar Nicholas II abdicated from the Russian throne. This brought to an end the Romanov dynasty that had ruled Russia for over three hundred years. The end was sealed in a short document in which Nicholas explained:
"Internal popular disturbances threaten to have a disastrous effect on the future conduct of this persistent war.... We have thought it well to renounce the Throne of the Russian Empire and to lay down the supreme power."
The ‘internal popular disturbances’ were the events now known as the ‘February Revolution’ (according to the calendar then in use in Russia), in the capital city which at the time was called Petrograd (formerly and once again since 1992 St. Petersburg). Strikes by the city’s workers, protests by women over bread shortages, wider discontent among the population escalated into revolution when some army units in Petrograd mutinied and went over the side of the protesters.
Demonstration in Petrograd during the February Revolution
via: State Museum of Political History in Russia
The situation was especially serious since Russia was fighting, and losing, ‘this persistent war’ with Germany on the Eastern Front of the First World War. Since 1915, Nicholas had been the Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s armed forces and thus the continuing defeats reflected on him personally. Nicholas was persuaded to abdicate by the army high command, conservative members of the Duma (parliament), as well as some of his own relatives. They thought that if they removed the tsar, who had become unpopular among large sections of the population, they could put down the revolution on the streets of the capital and then focus their efforts on fighting the war.
They were proved badly wrong. Several months uncertainty followed under a ‘provisional’ government, which lacked the authority and power to address the serious problems facing Russia, and culminated in the seizure of power by the extreme left-wing Bolsheviks under Lenin in October 1917. This ushered in 74 years of Communist rule in what became the Soviet Union.
Historians have long debated the causes of the two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Were they the consequence largely of the crisis created by the First World War? Or were they the culmination of longer-term tensions resulting from several decades of social and economic modernisation, while the tsars tried to cling onto their power?
In this centenary year historians around the world are continuing to debate the causes and significance of the Russian Revolutions. In the post-Soviet Russian Federation, however, commemorations are muted since the Russian government, perhaps understandably, has mixed attitudes to the events of 1917. (See ‘Revolution? What Revolution?’ Russia Asks 100 Years Later’, The New York Times, 10 March 2017, by Neil MacFarquhar).
Nevertheless, the head of the Russian TV channel ‘Rain’ has set up the Project 1917 website that uses contemporary letters, diaries, memoirs and other sources to give us an immediate sense of the unfolding drama of the revolutions.
In Britain the Royal Academy of Arts in London is hosting a major exhibition that ‘explores one of the most momentous periods in modern world history through the lens of [Russia’s] groundbreaking art.’
Russia’s revolutionary history can be explored through the resources held in the University Library. You can find books on the revolution and the Tsar, as well as a collection covering art in the early years of the Soviet Union. Many of the artists featured in the Royal Academy’s exhibition are well represented in the Library’s holdings.
Along with books on the history of the Russian Revolution, the University Library also has a range of DVDs and books on the celebrated Russian director, Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein directed the 1928 silent film October, a dramatisation of the 1917 October revolution.
An original film poster that was released in 1928 and designed
by V. Stenberg, G. Stenberg, Y. Ruklevsky via: Wikipedia
To find material on any of the subjects mentioned, search YorSearch, our Library catalogue.
