William Wilberforce, slavery and Whitby

Matthew Wigzell explores items in our collections that tell us more about slavery, and the journey towards its abolition.

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We have recently undertaken work to make available and promote some of the more unusual items in our collections, and to record the context and stories behind them (for example, our earlier blog post about a Scarborough siege coin).

As part of this process we discovered that we hold an election ticket or medal, issued by William Wilberforce during the 1807 general election. Wilberforce was a sitting MP for Yorkshire, and was one of three candidates seeking two seats. The other candidates were Charles William Fitzwilliam (Viscount Milton), and the other sitting MP, Henry Lascelles. One of the big issues of the time was slavery, with Wilberforce leading the abolitionist movement in Parliament. Lascelles on the other hand, was a slave-owner from an aristocratic family, and had vast wealth based on plantations in the Caribbean.

The Borthwick Institute here at York holds the Lascelles Slavery Archive, a wonderful resource documenting the business interests of the Lascelles family, and shedding light on slavery in the Caribbean and life on the plantations.

William Wilberforce medal

The election itself was highly significant. Yorkshire was the largest constituency in the country and regarded as a highly valuable seat. The candidates spent the vast sum of £250,000 on campaigning, with Lascelles and Milton accounting for most of the expenditure. Such was the scale of the campaign, it was dubbed the "Austerlitz of electioneering", and was the grandest election in the pre-reform era. The University Library has recently acquired a copy of "The Great Yorkshire Election of 1807" by Ellen Gibson Wilson, and you can also see copies of the original poll book in our collection, containing lists of voters and their chosen candidates.

The medal in our collection has a hole in the top, allowing it to be hung around the neck of Wilberforce supporters. Wilberforce was returned with the most votes, with Milton a close second. Just a few months before the election, the slave trade had been outlawed by the Slave Trade Act of 1807, but it wasn't until 1833, and the Slavery Abolition Act, that slavery itself was finally outlawed in British law.

Sidgwick's Best Virginia

We have several other items in our collection with links to the slave trade. This copper plate was used for printed packaging or advertising material, for Sidgwick's best Virginia tobacco (you can see the letters are are reversed so that they appear correctly on the printed copy). Unfortunately we don't have an awful lot of information about Sidgwick's, but they seem to have been a tobacco dealers based on Briggate, Leeds.

The plate probably dates from the 18th century and is evidence of the lucrative trade in tobacco and other goods from British colonies, built on the exploitation of slave labour. By the mid-1800 they were around 300,000 slaves in Virginia working large, labour intensive tobacco plantations, which were the backbone of Virginia's economy. We have a number of books in our collection where you can find out more information about the slave trade in Virginia.

Civilization of Africa lecture

Finally, our collection has evidence of the links between Britain and the United States abolition movements. This handbill advertised a lecture by Elliott Cresson, an American philanthropist and outspoken critic of slavery. Cresson participated in movement which promoted the idea of moving freed slaves to Africa, where he thought they would have a better life than in the US. The handbill shows he travelled to Britain in 1832, trying to find support for the idea. In 1835, he founded a colony in Liberia with around 120 freed slaves. Unfortunately this venture proved unsuccessful, and the colony was attacked and destroyed by local tribesmen.

The handbill is part of a collection printed in Whitby in the 1820s and 1830s, which provides an insight into the public life of the town at the time. All the items are part of the Raymond Burton Yorkshire collection and can be viewed in the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

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All images taken by Paul Shields. Copyright is University of York

The battle for Yorkshire hearts...

Sarah Griffin traces the history of the British Civil War, and Charles I's time in York, through items in the Library's Special Collections.

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Today, 3 June, is the anniversary of a meeting at Heworth Moor just outside York. It was called by Charles I, for him to meet the people of Yorkshire, and our Special Collections hold some exciting material that helps us tell this story.

Left: Charles I. Right: Charles I in Parliament.

The British Civil War was a conflict that saw brother set against brother and, ultimately, the execution of an anointed king. The disagreement was between Charles, who believed in the divine right of kings and as such did not take kindly to being told he couldn't do things, and Parliament, who were the people telling the king he couldn't do things. The spoof history book '1066 and all that' says it is easy to tell the sides apart as the Royalists were 'Romantic' and the Roundheads were 'Repulsive'. Sadly it's not quite that straightforward and a quick timeline is probably useful.

Firstly Charles decided to rule without Parliament which meant he was also without the funds that they could grant him. He decided to raise money through a variety of means, several of which seemed guaranteed to annoy everyone, such as taxing soap, or redrawing common land boundaries and then fining people for living in the King's forests.

Eventually, after eleven years, the money ran out and he had to recall Parliament. The atmosphere was, understandably, not relaxed, and  tensions cranked up and up. In January 1642, Charles burst into the House of Commons to arrest five Members of Parliament he had accused of treason. They escaped, and the people of London showed their displeasure of the King's actions by rioting in the streets. Charles had overplayed his hand and the capital had become a hostile place for him.

Illustration from a Civil War Tract

So, in March 1642, Charles abandoned London and brought his court to Yorkshire. Travelling with him was the Royal printer, Robert Barker. Barker set up his press in St William's College, in the shadow of York Minster's Great East Window. The King stayed in York for five months from March to August and, isolated as he was from his capital, he needed to stay in touch with his supporters and the rest of the country. He did this through a series of tracts printed by Barker in York. The publications were not objective pieces of work. In much the same ways as politicians today use information, Civil War Tracts were intended to discredit their opponents and to tell one side of the story. The production of the tracts was not high quality, they were quickly produced and rarely illustrated. Any images tended to be poor quality and often did not match the text, for example a broadsheet from the King complaining about the raising of trained bands was illustrated with an image of a man riding a sea monster!

Charles' letter to John Goodricke

Charles needed to drum up support and as well as publishing tracts he wrote letters and addressed his people. One of his letters survives in the Special Collections. It was to John Goodricke, a Yorkshire Member of Parliament, asking him to remain in the city at the King's pleasure. Goodricke stayed loyal to the crown and was eventually captured and imprisoned by Parliament.

In May, Charles called a meeting of the gentry of Yorkshire to come to York Castle. The Freeholders of the City were unhappy to be excluded, so a second gathering happened on 3 June at Heworth Moor. It is claimed that over seventy thousand people attended. What Charles wanted was for those present to pledge their allegiance to him for the coming conflict.

Parliament was unhappy with this state of affairs. Open hostilities had not been declared and they were keen to avoid war if possible. They prepared a petition to deliver to the king requesting him to stop trying to raise an army, and asked Thomas Fairfax, a Yorkshire gentleman, to deliver it. Charles knew that something like this was going to happen, and refused to let Fairfax anywhere near him. Every time Fairfax came close, the King would gallop off in the opposite direction, once almost running Fairfax down. This game of  'tag' finally ended when Fairfax managed to force the petition under the King's saddle. Fairfax wrote a letter to his father, Ferdinando, listing the people who had been at the meeting. This letter also survives in our Special Collections.

Left: Thomas Fairfax. Right: Fairfax's letter to his father.

Charles was disappointed at the response of the Yorkshire gentry who were less keen to pledge allegiance than he had hoped. One eyewitness described the day as a 'confused murmur of noise', not the ringing acclaim that the King was relying on. Charles left York in August and travelled to Nottinghamshire where he raised his standard, and took the first steps on the road to a war that would divide the hearts of the English people, and eventually led him to the scaffold.

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All the items in the Special Collections are on the Library catalogue and available for study. For more information please contact Sarah Griffin, Special Collections Librarian.

York in pictures, old age in the USSR, the trial of Marie Antoinette...

The Library holds a wide and varied range of pamphlets, covering a variety of political and historical subjects, with influential authors including Mandela and Nehru. Ilka Heale introduces some highlights.

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The Library has a collection of just over two thousand pamphlets written by contemporary politicians, writers and historians, which are bound together in volumes and identified by the shelfmark 'OP'. They contain a wide range of topics, including the early Labour movement, Marxism, Communism, Railways, Housing, Russian industry and history of South Africa, Rhodesia and Poland.

These pamphlets comprise of a variety of fascinating primary source material, with subjects drawn largely from the first half of the twentieth century. The Empire and its demise is a popular theme, with pamphlets from southern Africa and India analysing the movement to independence. Another favourite subject is the fragile European situation with its explosion into two world wars, along with the establishment of new nations like the USSR. Other pamphlets focus closer to home, and look at the birth of the welfare state, or the clearance of slums in British cities, including York.

The pamphlets are also immensely valuable as primary sources from some of the twentieth century's most influential figures; there are pamphlets written by Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, and Jawaharlal Nehru, to name but a few.

Each pamphlet has a detailed record on the Library catalogue, and can be searched for by subject, title, or author. Alternatively, the full collection can be browsed at its shelf location on the second floor of the Morrell Library. There are also a few volumes of pamphlets published before 1850, which are shelved in Special Collections; these too be found via the Library catalogue.

Below are a few selections from the collection...

  

The trial at large of Marie Antoinette, late Queen of France, before the Revolutionary Tribunal, at Paris, Oct. 15, and an authentic account of her execution, October 16, 1793 is a transcription from 1793 of the trial of Queen Marie Antoinette, which resulted in her execution on the guillotine.

Also bound into this volume is 'A speech delivered in the Reichstag' by Adolf Hitler on 7 March 1936.

King Leopold's soliloquy: a defense of his Congo rule by Mark Twain finds the American writer and commentator Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), writing in 1905 under his better-known pen name of Mark Twain, satirising Belgium's King Leopold and his country's colonial policies.

  

York in pictures, a pamphlet published in 1900, is a history and guide to York and includes photographs from the turn of the 20th century.

Also bound into this volume is Who Was Guy Fawkes? by the rather wonderfully named Lockwood Huntley. Published in Beverley in 1914 and covering six pages, this pamphlet was written by the Head Librarian in Beverley.

Cambridge printing, 1521-1924 is a lecture on the history of Cambridge University Press and was donated to the Library by none other than J.B. Morrell himself. John Bowes Morrell (1872-1963) was one of York's greatest benefactors. He played a significant part in the campaign for a university in York. The Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust, where he was chairman, was the major financial sponsor of the new university and the academic activities which preceded it. In 1955, Morrell persuaded the Trust to buy Heslington Hall and its grounds and later gave them as the nucleus of the University site. The C and JB Morrell Trust also gave large sums towards the founding of the University, and today it supports the Morrell Centre for Toleration.

Books and libraries were very important to JB Morrell. His father, William Wilberforce Morrell, was the chief advocate of a free public library in York, finally achieved in 1891. JB chaired the Public Library Committee from 1913 to 1920, expanding library holdings and arranging funding for a new library building. When the University of York opened in 1963, it was a most fitting tribute that the new University Library should bear his name.

Official guide to the Scarborough and Whitby railway. Things have changed in the 120 years since this was published. The coast route is now part of the National Cycle Network.

Other titles bound into this volume are guides to Wensleydale, Ilkley, Harrogate and Flamborough published in the late 19th century. The name on the title page suggests that these guides were once owned by William Wilberforce Morrell, father to John Bowes Morrell.

To find out more about accessing the pamplets collection, please ask at the Library Help Desk or contact your Academic Liaison Librarian.

Parish library collections at the York Minster Library

Maria Nagle reveals some of the parish library treasures held at York Minster.

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While York Minster is home to the largest cathedral library in England, not all of the collections it houses are owned by the Chapter of York. 

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many of Yorkshire's surrounding parishes deposited their own book collections into the Minster Library for safekeeping, as they did not have the space or necessary environmental conditions required to safely and securely care for their books. These collections provide a fascinating insight into the interests and reading habits of not just clergymen, but also their parishioners.

Many parishes benefited from large collection donations from local noblemen or prominent figures, which often held unexpected treasures and items not usually associated with religious libraries. For example, James Davis's donation to Riccall Vicarage Library in 1886 contains a large collection of travel literature exploring locations as far afield as Algeria, Iceland and Brazil, as well as those closer to home. Collections such as these would have often been accessible to parishioners and some view parish libraries as the informal predecessors to the public libraries of today.

Some of the Riccall travel books

Over the years, over 1500 books have been deposited by surrounding parishes and each collection has its own story to tell. Some have battled through the elements in their journey here; a small collection of five books is all that remains of Bubwith Parish Library. They had been gifted with 689 books in 1747, but throughout the years these had been used to light the vestry fire! This discovery prompted the parish to deposit the remaining volumes in York Minster Library in 1892 for their preservation.

The surviving volumes of the Bubwith collection

Some of the books that have made it this far still bear signs of past use and indeed, misuse. The woodcuts in this 1516 missale from Stainton Vicarage have been slashed, possibly as an act of Reformation iconoclasm against Catholic iconography. The clean cut suggests an act of destruction that was perhaps more demonstrative than wilful, as the image is still very much visible.

Slashed page in the Stainton missale

Others bear the marks of more traditional use: this book from Hackness church on the sacrament of the Eucharist was once owned by the celebrated Elizabethan diarist Margaret Hoby. The annotations supplement the pious life recorded in her diary with her interactions with religious texts; several books from the Hackness collection contain them, providing further insight into the life and reading habits of an Elizabethan puritan.

Page bearing Margaret Hoby's handwriting, Hackness collection

Currently, a project is underway to review these parish collections and the agreements for their deposit in York Minster Library. The project aims to create a reliable record of the deposits through examination of their original agreements and the creation of a thorough inventory. Although the majority of these collections are discoverable online on Yorsearch, some have eluded cataloguing for various reasons, including staggered deposits and split collections. This review will help update our records of these deposits and direct the collections' future uses in agreement with the respective parishes. It also provides a wonderful opportunity to discover the stories behind the collections and the long-forgotten treasures hidden within them.

For more information contact the Library staff at library@yorkminster.org

Behind the name on the door...

Have you ever noticed that each of the study rooms in the Morrell and Fairhurst has a name on the door, and wondered what's behind that name?

Wonder no more, as all is being revealed this week. Each name has been chosen because it represents a place or person, or something with a York or Yorkshire connection.

Acomb doesn’t just refer to an obscure, far-away suburb at the end of the no. 4 bus line…

Acomb Room Sign, photo credit: Paul Shields, University Photographer

Researching for and writing these signs has been a fascinating process, and they show the wealth of resources that we hold here, in Special Collections and the Borthwick Institute for Archives. For instance, did you know that we have one of the original manuscripts of Laurence Sterne’s autobiography? And patient papers for The Retreat hospital, including poems, stories and paintings produced by the inmates?

Title page of the original manuscript of Laurence Sterne's autobiography, 5.36 RBY Col. Reproduced from an original in the Borthwick Institute. Click any image to enlarge.

Art therapy on lawn: Retreat patients sitting painting, RET 1/8/4/3/1, 1950s. Reproduced from an original in the Borthwick Institute

We don’t just have signs on famous figures either - there is information about lesser-known people, such as Catherine Cappe, who was prominent in the Unitarian movement in York.

Next time you’re in one of our study rooms, look up - you never know what you’ll find out.

‘The Pity of War’ - conflict and remembrance

The latest exhibition from Special Collections looks at conflict and remembrance through material found in the holdings at York.

War affects everyone in some way - whether as a front line soldier, an artist or poet moved to create works inspired by war, or people who feel their conscience will not allow them to fight and kill their fellow men.

The four cases in the Harry Fairhurst corridor focus on War in Yorkshire; Art and War; the First World War; and finally the theme of Remembrance. Highlights include a silk hanky commemorating South African battles, copies of the Tribunal, a newspaper produced by the No Conscription Fellowship, and a book of Rupert Brooke's poetry with an inscription that ties it directly to the poet.

Brooke's Nineteen Fourteen sonnet sequence must be among some of the best known poems in the world. Written at the beginning of the First World War in a time before the reality and horror of trench warfare had started to become apparent, they reflect a spirit of confidence and patriotism that would be gradually eroded over the next four years.

Image from Collected poems of Rupert Brooke London 1918

Brooke was 27 when war broke out and already a published poet. He was commissioned into the Royal Naval Division with many of his friends including Arthur Asquith, son of the Prime Minister. The regiment set sail for Gallipoli but Brooke developed septicaemia from an infected mosquito bite and died off the coast of Greece on 23 April 1915. His friends, including Asquith, buried him on the island of Skyros where his tomb still remains.

Picture: Brooke's tomb on Skyros from Wikipedia - reproduced under a Creative Commons licence. 

After the war the architect Edwin Lutyens was asked to design a memorial in honour of the Royal Naval Division. The first six lines of Brooke's third sonnet were chosen to be engraved on it.

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,

But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

That men call age; and those who would have been,

Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

In Special Collections at the University of York is a book of Brooke's collected poems published in 1918. The inscription on the first page reads:

Edwin Lutyens from Arthur Asquith

The first eight lines of sonnet III are the inscription for our Royal Naval Division memorial. July 1924.

Inscription from Collected poems of Rupert Brooke, London, 1918
From the Eliot collection, University of York.

The memorial was unveiled in May 1925 so it would be nice to think that the book was given by Asquith to Lutyens to remind the architect of the exact wording required for the inscription.

Brooke's legacy is very different to the other war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. He has an almost mythical aura, the golden warrior who died before his time. His war poetry does mirror emotions that were widely felt at the beginning of the First World War but most of his work was written before 1914. So perhaps his more enduring legacy is in his pre-war poetry reflecting the sentiments and belief structure of a lost generation.

The exhibition runs until 28 August and can be found in the display cases along the Harry Fairhurst corridor. For more information please contact the Special Collections Librarian Sarah Griffin: sarah.griffin@york.ac.uk.

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If you want to explore more on this topic, the Library subscribes to the First World War Poetry Digital Archive; an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. You can access it through the E-resources Guide in YorSearch - just scroll down and click the link.

The Library also has access to The Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics collection; also found in the E-resources Guide. This collection offers thousands of essays on major authors, periods and genres, written by experts and designed for student readers. Among many others there's a Companion to the Poetry of the First World War and a Companion to the Literature of the First World War.

Brooke's poetry can be found on the shelves in the Library at MA 181.9 BRO.

Photo: Poppy Field by Mark Shirley. Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

The artist JMW Turner in Yorkshire

How many of you knew that the great landscape artist JMW Turner (1775-1851) spent time sketching and painting in Yorkshire?

York Art Gallery held an exhibition in 1980 that featured many of his works from around our area and we have the exhibition catalogue on the Library shelves. It’s only a slim booklet with black and white images but it makes for interesting reading. Turner painted scenes all over the county, including Ilkley Moor, Knaresborough and Whitby, and produced this beautiful painting of York Minster, viewed from the River Ouse, c.1815.

View of York Minster from the River Ouse
Image courtesy of www.william-turner.org  - click to enlarge

It's difficult to tell exactly where the artist must have been positioned for this view. Does anyone have a suggestion?

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Snow Storm, Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps 1812
Image courtesy of www.william-turner.org - click to enlarge

The picture to the left is Turner's Hannibal Crossing the Alps. According to William-Turner.org, the tempestuous backdrop of this famous scene is "reputed to have been inspired by a storm over Otley's Chevin while Turner was staying at Farnley Hall".



(For those readers who have completed the gruelling Boxing Day Chevin Chase run this information will come as no surprise.)

The Flying Saucer Review: tales of our journal collection

Last month was an unusual change of pace for me as I spent many afternoons mucking in with the big journal move out to our new external store in Nether Poppleton. I have yet to visit this voluminous space, but of course like everyone else I have been imagining that vault from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. For someone who normally sits in front of a computer screen all day it was great fun to get my hands dirty. In this case, quite literally as handling dusty back issues of journals is a rather grubby task!
One of the unexpected pleasures of the task has been having a perusal of the weird and wonderful journals which the library has to offer.

Flying Saucer Review

My favourite so far has been the Flying Saucer Review.

At first I was sure that the enticing name would turn out to be a bit of false advertising but no, this magazine is about UFOs and the possible existence of aliens. I could not help but wonder which department had sponsored the acquisition of these periodicals.

Was it Physics? After all the debate about life on other planets and the possible existence of a technologically superior species has become increasingly scientific, or at least pseudo-scientific in some cases. There seems to have been a whole spate of documentaries in recent years investigating with contemporary scientific understanding a range of previously far fetched notions. I have watched everything from a 'serious' investigation into the viability of the warp drive and other futuristic technology seen on Star Trek, to a proposed theory that aliens are really a highly evolved future variant of the human race which has discovered time travel and now travels back to our present time for a reason or reasons unknown. Personally, that last idea is a bit too Terminator for my liking.

Another department who could be interested is Sociology. Surely if there was intelligent life apart from on earth, the potential questions raised about how we view ourselves as a species would be numerous and contentious. Never mind the problems of a global society, what about an intergalactic one? Would we see a revival of etiquette books? Would racial divisions here on earth lessen as we felt drawn together by simply being human? How would world religions be affected? Oh, the questions are entertaining and  endless :-)

If the Flying Saucer Review has whetted your appetite for journal consumption, then let me point you in the direction of a few more of my favourites which cover a broad range of topics:

1. The Penguin Film Review - Number 3 from 1947 has beautiful black and white stills depicting 'Decor in Recent Russian Cinema' and 'Italian Films since the Liberation'. If you want to annoy your film buff friends by knowing what was written about iconic world cinema when it was actually released then this is the journal for you.

2.Corona: The Journal of His Majesty’s Colonial Service -I opened this volume purely by chance and was surprised to find it an entertaining time capsule from a bygone era. With serious Bond-esque undertones, volume 1 from 1947 gave me a selection of materials all relating to the colonies. The open letters were particularly intriguing including the titles: Experimental Power Surf Boat, Foetid Fragrance, Plea for the Camel and Fortune in a Tanganyika Swamp.

North Riding Pictorial Journal

3. North Riding Pictorial Journal (1858-58) -Stunning prints depicting 'Nest of the Mole Cricket' or a Crochet night cape'. Quaint, Victorian and very charming and even better, located firmly in Yorkshire.

Bad Attitude

4. Bad Attitude: The Radical Women’s Newspaper -who could fail to be intrigued by the article Sodomites and Man-Royals as found in the Autumn/Winter issue 8 1995?

Journals, like our books, are catalogued on YorSearch - and even those that have been moved to the external store can be requested and made available to you.

As a final note, when I was writing this blog I could not (much to my shame) remember which Indiana Jones movie had the scene with the huge storage facility in it and had to turn to Google to supply the answer. As I skimmed the list of results, I spotted the link to this article:
Raiders of the Lost Archives

Of course I had to have a look. In the article John Sutherland, an English professor, recalls his own pre-digital world of research which consisted more often than not of hopping on various modes of transport and hoping that the distant archive/library/collection he was heading to would have what he was looking for. Having completed my own MA slap bang in the middle of e-journals and Google books, I couldn't imagine a more different experience. The article struck a chord with something that I had experienced all through the journal moving process: that wondrous shiver of delight at finding something new. I must admit that I even spotted a few volumes I really wish I had known about when I was writing my dissertation. It made me think that while on-line catalogues, research aids and journal databases have revolutionised how we conduct research and indeed have opened up whole new vistas in information gathering, it is no harm to just go and browse. While you are there, spare a thought for researchers and enthusiasts who have gone before us, one dust-covered, grubby hand at a time.

Alan Ayckbourn: “Ever since I tried to retire things have got busier”

There was an interesting article in the Guardian this weekend about the dramatist Alan Ayckbourn, his long career and the revival of one of his plays at the National Theatre. 

The Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where Ayckbourn was Artistic Director from 1972 to 2009.
Photo: Scarborough: Stephen Joseph Theatre by Tobias Schiller. Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

The University of York acquired Alan Ayckbourn’s archive in 2011 - it contains thousands of pages of material, including original manuscripts, handwritten drafts and plot diagrams, as well as photographs and a collection of letters “that reads like a Who’s Who of theatre”. Speaking at the announcement of the archive’s accession Sir Alan said:

“The archive is really about the writing process. The old method was my wife, Heather, at an old typewriter with me dictating from my handwritten notes. I always like to go to bed with a tidy script and, in the old days, I would trawl back through several pages of typing and blot things out with tippex or cover my scripts with arrows.

“I realised that what I was learning from others and from experience was valuable and I wanted to chronicle it. I hope the Archive is an extension of this. I think the Archive will be a fertile ground for ideas and inspire people to write.” University of York News and Events, 27 June 2011

The material is held in the Samuel Storey Writing and Performance Collection within the Borthwick Institute for Archives. More information on the collection and on the Alan Ayckbourn Archive Education project is available from the Borthwick’s website or by contacting them directly.