Our collections

The University of Surrey Archive is the institutional archive of the University. It includes records on the planning and development of the University from its foundation in 1966, as well as more contemporary records on the expansion of the original site.

Information on faculties, departments and courses is also documented, with subjects taught, facilities available and exams undertaken recorded.

There is also a large and varied collection of photographs which help visually document the University’s history, as well as staff and student publications revealing personal experiences, and organisational documents charting the decision-making of the University.

The Battersea Polytechnic Archive is the institutional archive of the University of Surrey’s predecessor Battersea Polytechnic which was founded in 1891. Situated in Battersea Park Road, the Institute was the second of three proposed polytechnics for south London and was formally opened in 1894 with six main departments:

• Mechanical Engineering and Building Trades
• Electrical Engineering and Physics
• Chemistry
• Women's Subjects
• Art and Music.

During the years 1927 to 1939 the Polytechnic consolidated with a growing emphasis on science and engineering and the addition of metallurgy and the closure of the Art Department. In 1956 the Polytechnic was designated a College of Advanced Technology and the name was changed the following year to Battersea College of Technology.

The archive includes papers relating to the Polytechnic’s governance and administration, departments and student activities.

This archive comprises recordings of interviews with former students who attended the University of Surrey’s predecessor bodies, Battersea Polytechnic and Battersea College of Technology. The recordings cover Battersea Polytechnic in the 1940s through to the 1950s when it became a College of Advanced Technology and then the change to a University into the 1960s and the building of the campus in Guildford.

In the interviews the former students respond to questions covering a range of student experiences including:

• Social events
• Social life
• Student accommodation
• Sports competitions
• Student societies
• The Students’ Union
• World War Two
• Political changes
• Course content
• Work placements and memorable lectures.

Angika Dance Company were a British Indian Dance Company active between 1997 and 2008. Led by the creative partnership of Mayuri Boonham and Subathra Subramaniam, they aimed to bring a contemporary approach to classical Bharata Natyam Dance.

Their archive contains administrative papers for the dance company and their production company Turtle Key Arts; biographies and information on the company's staff; promotional materials and footage from performances and tours; and records relating to the company's outreach work.

This collection comprises books, periodicals, reports, press cuttings, programmes and press releases collected by the former dancer, critic, academic and researcher Dr Ann Nugent.

The Association of Dance and Mime Artists (ADMA) (1976-1985) sought to educate key people within major funding bodies about British New Dance. It pressed for funding of experimental dance companies and for grants for choreographers’ exploratory work. ADMA held two festivals, in 1977 and 1978, and a Day of Dance in July 1981. The 1977 festival was one of the first major dance festivals in the UK. Both years, the festival was open to anyone, resulting in widely varying standards of performance, leading to mixed reviews and commentary.  

The archive is a collection of papers about ADMA's activities gathered by their administrator Irene Fawkes. The papers record what the group was campaigning for and who its members were. Key people associated with ADMA were Fergus Early, Julie Eaglen, Irene Fawkes, Michael Huxley, Jenny Mann, Richard Mansfield, Virginia Taylor, Chris Thompson, and Sue Davies.

Audrey Wethered (1903-2001) studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Art of Movement Studio, where she was a pupil of Rudolf Laban and worked with Lisa Ullmann, Warren Lamb and Marion North. Wethered went on to use movement principles in therapy with a range of client groups including children and adults with mental health issues, and adults with learning disabilities.

Chloë Gardner studied concepts of Effort and Space at the Jooss/Leeder Summer School in 1931 and then with Rudolf Laban, Lisa Ullmann and Warren Lamb. She graduated from the London School of Occupational Therapy in 1944 and went on to apply movement principles to her work.  

Wethered and Gardner worked together on three projects: working with schizophrenic patients at the Goodmayes Hospital, Ilford (1970), mental health patients at the Leavesden Hospital, Hertfordshire (1972), and with autistic children at the Smith Hospital, Henley (1974). Wethered and Gardner were also visiting tutors at Cleveland University Summer School (USA) in 1987, where they gave lectures, classes and demonstrations on the use of movement principles in therapy.

The papers include notes for clinical practical sessions; files on their joint projects; lectures and papers on movement therapy; student notes, evaluations and essays; music scores; general correspondence; and Wethered's published works on movement therapy and thesis, 'The Art of Movement in Health and Illness'.

The Ballet Independents’ Group (BIG) was founded in 1996. Their aim was to stimulate independent thought and action in ballet and influence its culture by situating ballet practice in a contemporary context, nurturing creativity and composition, and facilitating communication and debate. BIG was run by ballet dancers and teachers Susan Crow and Jennifer Jackson.

BIG's primary activities were discussion forums and choreographic courses, and the archive records their work.

Bettina Vernon (1920-1995) was born in Austria and trained with Gertrud Bodenwieser at the Vienna State Academy of Music and Theatre. She then joined the Bodenweiser Dance Group and toured with the company in Europe and Australia during the Second World War. After the War, Vernon formed Ballet for Two with fellow dancer Evelyn Ippen, a company based in Britain which drew on Bodenweiser’s expressive modern dance style. Vernon and Ippen were later associated with the Dance Department at the University of Surrey. The archive includes papers, photographs and audio-visual material on Vernon’s work, as well as related books and periodicals.

Betty Meredith-Jones (1908-1996) was a key exponent of Laban-based movement education and therapy. After studying for a diploma at Chelsea College of Physical Education, she went on to teach movement workshops in schools, through the social services and for various recreational organisations. In 1941 she was taught by Rudolf Laban and Lisa Ullmann, and the following year she began teaching at Homerton Training College for Teachers in Cambridge.

Meredith-Jones moved to the United States in 1952 where she took up a post at the University of California, Berkeley and worked on movement with a wide variety of 'client groups' including autistic children and schizophrenic women. From 1956 to 1958 she did a BA in Psychology and an MA in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Meredith-Jones spent her remaining working life in New York. Here she became involved with the philosophies of Jungian analysis and ran movement sessions for patients with Parkinson's disease.

The archive includes notes for teaching sessions, notes on Laban, papers on the Berkeley Project, and articles on ageing and movement. Photographs include Meredith-Jones teaching movement sessions with young children and the elderly, and audio-visual material includes Meredith-Jones's teaching sessions with Parkinson's patients and the over-60s.

Bice (Beatrice) Bellairs (1910-1991) set up the Grant Bellairs School of Dance and Drama in London in 1935 with fellow dancer Pauline Grant. The school relocated to Guildford during the Second World War and subsequently became Guildford School of Acting. 

This is a collection of scrapbooks given to Bellairs by her teacher, Ruby Ginner (1886-1978). The scrapbooks and related material cover Ginner’s career, featuring Revived Greek Dance, a dance method which drew on athletics, drama and dance and was devised by Ginner, She also ran the Ginner-Mawer School of Dance and Drama with the mime artist Irene Mawer. Some of the scrapbooks also relate to Ginner's friend, the ballerina Anna Pavlova.

Classical Greek Dance, once known as Revived Greek Dance, was devised by the dancer and teacher Ruby Ginner (1886-1978) and drew on athletics, drama and dance. This collection is of materials relating to Classical Greek Dance donated by pupils of Ginner, who ran the Ginner-Mawer School of Dance and Drama with dancer Irene Mawer from 1916 until her retirement in 1954. The School was originally located in London, before moving to Devon during the Second World War, and Cheltenham in 1947 due to their London premises being damaged in the Blitz.

The collection includes books, photographs, costumes, props and audio-visual material.

Cycles Dance Company (1974-1982) was a small-scale touring company founded by four London Contemporary Dance School graduates and based in Royal Leamington Spa. Its aim was to take dance to towns in the West Midlands that the larger dance companies did not visit, and company members choreographed dances in various styles to interest a broad audience.

The archive documents the work of Cycles Dance Company through administrative papers, photographs, programmes, and the company’s newsletter, Cycles News. The archive also contains material relating to other dance groups with which Cycles’ administrator Irene Fawkes was involved: Sally Sykes, Intriplicate Mime Company, Giselle Enterprises, Maas Movers, and Scaramouche.

Dance Advance was founded in 1984 by four ex-Royal Ballet and Sadler’s Wells dancers. Their aims were to promote new work by young choreographers, composers and designers working in collaboration; to establish a British modern dance company working from a classical starting point; and to create new audiences for classical dance by providing a flexible company able to perform in smaller venues. They collaborated with Kenneth Macmillan on ‘Sea of Troubles’ and created an Educational Outreach Programme that could provide classes, workshops and demonstrations for all members of the community. The archive consists of papers documenting their activities, and publicity material for and photographs of productions.  

EMMA Professional Dance Company of the East Midlands was a small contemporary dance company set up in 1976 as a pioneer in regional dance development. Alongside touring and performances, EMMA carried out extensive education work in the Midlands, including classes, workshops and residencies.

The archive records the activities of the company, including their work with choreographers such as Christopher Bruce and Royston Maldoom.

Dalcroze Society UK oversees the teaching of Eurhythmics, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze's method of learning musical sensibility through movement. Founded in 1915, the society is one of the oldest music education charities in the world.

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) devised his method of teaching music through movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Dalcroze Eurhythmics can be applied to different age groups and in a wide variety of music education, dance, drama and therapy contexts. Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a well-established and very practical mode of learning, focusing on whole body movement, and aural training using singing and improvisation.

The archive contains administrative papers including membership records and calendars of events; correspondence and photographs; instruments and music scores; programmes and publicity material; publications by members and related books and periodicals.

Dance and The Child International (daCi) is a non-profit membership association which promotes the growth and development of dance for children internationally. They aim to provide opportunities for young people to experience dance as creators, performers and spectators. They hope to engage a range of people interested and involved with dance for young people, to develop activities and projects, and advocate for the inclusion of dance in a range of contexts. Founded in 1978, daCi became a fully constituted branch of UNESCO’s Conseil International de la Danse (CID) in 1980.

The daCi Archive records the organisation at its international level through the papers of its governing bodies and material on its triennial conferences.

Dancers Anonymous were an independent dance company. Formed in 1973 and active until 1987, the company was managed by Bridget Crowley, then Head of Theatre Training at Arts Educational Schools in London, with the aim to launch promising dance students into the professional world in a secure environment. The company performed annually at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and had to manage the whole production themselves. Many of the dancers went on to become professional dancers and choreographers.

The collection comprises management and administrative records, performance and production records, and publicity material for Dancers Anonymous. Photographs, videos, music and costumes, as well as programmes, posters and reviews document the company’s appearances at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and papers and correspondence record how the company operated.

This collection comprises books, periodicals, and programmes collected by the dancer, teacher and educationalist David Henshaw (1930-2018).

Extemporary Dance Theatre was a small-scale touring dance troupe which aimed to take contemporary dance to audiences otherwise not exposed to dance. They initially formed as Extemporary Dance Group in 1975 to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and established a company after good reviews at the Festival. Extemporary occupied a key role within British contemporary dance and came to have an international profile, with dancers drawn from Israel, Canada, Australia, South America and England. Choreography was produced by key modern dance choreographers such as Richard Alston, David Gordon, Michael Clark, Karole Armitage and Robert North. The company also promoted the choreography of those within the organisation, such as Corrine Bougaard, Steven Giles, Emilyn Claid and Robb Fleming.

The Extemporary Dance Theatre Collection contains the administrative and performance history of the company from its origins in 1975 through to its disbanding in 1991. Almost all of the works choreographed for Extemporary during this time are contained on video within the collection, along with photographs from performances, rehearsals and publicity shoots, and the complete administrative holdings of the organisation.

Educational Dance-Drama Theatre (EDDT) was formed by Gerard Bagley, in conjunction with other former students from the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester, and dates from 1954-1979. The company specialised in movement-based work and toured schools and colleges. Their work employed dance, drama and mime to provide an entertaining and educational theatre experience for children. 

The archive contains artwork, audio-visual material, photographs, posters, papers and correspondence relating to the company. The artwork consists of hand-painted set and costume designs from a number of EDDT works. 

Fernau Hall (1915-1988) was ballet critic for the Daily Telegraph from 1969 until shortly before his death in 1988, and also wrote for The Dancing Times and Ballet Today.

The archive houses an extensive collection of his writings, both articles and books, and includes his unpublished biography of ballet choreographer and dancer Antony Tudor. The archive also reflects Hall’s interest in South Asian dance.

Freda Steel was the first administrator for Northern Dance Theatre (now Northern Ballet). Northern Dance Theatre was established in 1969, beginning with 11 dancers and a focus on small-scale classical and modern works. This collection was donated by Steel in 1997 and is made up of papers, programmes, photographs, posters and scrapbooks covering the early life of the company.

Geraldine Stephenson (1925-2017) was one of a core group of artists and apprentices who trained with pioneer movement theorist Rudolf Laban at the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester in its early years in the 1940s and who then worked with and developed his theories through their work.  She was a dancer, teacher and producer but became best known for her role as a choreographer and movement director in theatre, TV and film; she is believed to be the first person credited as a movement director.

Significant material in the archive includes notes from her studies at the Art of Movement Studio; handwritten dance sequences and stage directions; material reflecting long working relationships with companies and individuals; scrapbooks; teaching notes; solo dance recital photographs and working papers for large-scale pageants and community events.

This archive dates from 1959-1968 and comprises the records of a small scale touring company run by John and Barbara Gregory, who trained with the Russian ballet dancers Nicholai and Nadine Legat. In addition to administrative papers for the company and the British School of Russian Ballet, the archive contains programmes, press cuttings, books, photographs, costume designs, and periodicals.

Comprising 40 items collected by Henry Jameson Mein (1920-2001), the Henry Mein Collection is a ballet enthusiast’s set of books and scrapbooks containing cuttings, articles and images on dance, theatre and entertainment collected from newspapers, predominantly during World War Two.

Joan Mercedes Russell MBE (1921-1989) was a prominent dance teacher, choreographer and author on dance in primary and secondary education. During 1948-1950, she studied at the Laban Art of Movement Studio under Rudolf Laban and Lisa Ullmann, whose ideas greatly influenced her.

Russell established the dance department at Worcester Training College (later Worcester College of Higher Education) and taught there from 1948-1982. She also taught both children and teachers on numerous short dance courses and lectured in schools, colleges and universities in Britain and abroad. She chaired Worcester Dance Group, the Laban Art of Movement Guild, Dance and the Child International (daCi), and the Modern Educational Dance Section of the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education. As a practising Christian, she instigated many ventures involving dance with religious worship.

The archive includes teaching notes, lesson plans and syllabi; lecture manuscripts; Russell’s choreographic work; and book drafts.

Kickstart was a small-scale touring dance company formed in 1977 and active until 1982. The company toured small scale arts centres and secondary schools with performances, workshops and classes. The archive is made up of photographs, posters and papers recording their activities. 

This is a collection of movement scores notated in Kinetography Laban originally held by Nonington College of Physical Education.

This archive dates from 1984-2000 and contains a variety of material covering the development of Britain’s first Afro-Caribbean dance theatre company from a small-scale company operating on a voluntary basis, to a large-scale company with a strong focus on education. The archive includes audio-visual and publicity material, as well as books, papers and photographs.

Green Candle Dance Company was formed by Fergus Early in 1987 and the company has produced works for primary and secondary school children, the elderly, groups with special needs, and general audiences. Green Candle believe that dance should not only be devised for everyone but also include everyone, and that any venue can become a performance venue. Their work combines dance, drama, narrative, and song, and they have performed at hospitals, care homes and schools. 

The archive contains papers, artwork, publicity material, and audio-visual material covering the life of Green Candle, and following their work with different groups in the community. 

The International Council of Kinetography Laban/Labanotation (ICKL) is an organisation founded in 1959 responsible for the development of the movement notation system pioneered by Rudolf Laban. ICKL promotes the use of the system and encourages research for its development and applications. The Council acts as a deciding body with regard to the orthography and principles of the system; an alteration of a notation symbol or the refinement of movement terminology involves a process of research, presentations, discussion, and validation. ICKL's principal activities are a biennial conference, held in a different country each time, and publication of conference proceedings, bibliographies, and indexes.

The archive includes correspondence; administrative and conference papers; minutes and reports of meetings; and Labanotation scores.

Dancer Janet Smith formed her company Janet Smith and Dancers in 1976. The mid-scale company’s productions were popular and accessible, and they toured extensively in the UK and internationally, with works choreographed by Janet Smith, Robert North, and Christopher Bruce. The company ran until 1990, and the archive is made up of administrative papers; artwork; photographs; publicity material; and audio-visual material.

The Laban Guild of Movement and Dance promotes and advances the study of Laban-based movement and dance through conferences, courses, and publications. Lisa Ullmann and Sylvia Bodmer, colleagues of Rudolf Laban, founded the organisation in 1946 as the Laban Art of Movement Guild. In the early days the organisation’s main activities were an annual conference and weekend refresher course, but over time demand led to an increase in events. The Guild is governed by a council and has an elected president and chairman. When the Guild was founded, Rudolf Laban was elected president for life.

The archive covers the Laban Guild's activities from 1945, including papers on the courses, conferences and festivals organised by the Guild; membership records; annual reports; and meetings of the council.

Leslie Burrowes (1908-1985) was a dancer and teacher whose career bridged the typically British styles of Hellenic-influenced dance and the predominantly German modern dance (Ausdruckstanz), imported into Britain in the 1930s. After training in Margaret Morris Movement, Burrowes taught at Dartington Hall in Devon and in 1931 became the first British dancer to receive the full diploma from Mary Wigman’s dance school in Dresden. Burrowes’ opened her own dance studio in 1933 and also The Dance Centre with dancer Louise Soelberg in 1938.

The collection contains material created and collected by Burrowes relating to her dance training and career including performing and teaching, as well letters from Mary Wigman, photographs, scrapbooks and artwork.

Lilla Seiber, née Bauer, (1912-2011) was a principal dancer in Ballets Jooss and an acquaintance of the pioneering movement theorist Rudolf Laban. This archive consists of correspondence, papers, photographs, scrapbooks and press cuttings relating to Bauer’s life and career, including letters from Laban.

Lisa Ullmann (1907-1985) was a dancer and teacher. She trained at the Berlin Laban School and taught in Kurt Jooss's schools in Essen and at Dartington Hall.  In 1946, she established the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester with her partner the pioneer movement theorist Rudolf Laban, to train teachers in Laban's methods.  She remained the studio's principal until 1973, by which time it was based in Addlestone in Surrey, having moved there in 1953. 

The archive contains administrative papers for the studio; correspondence; notes on Laban's theories; photographs of Ullmann as a dancer and teacher; Ullmann’s own writings and books and periodicals.

Ludmilla Mlada (1918-2003) was a dancer, choreographer and teacher. She studied at Marie Rambert's school in the late 1930s and performed with Ballet Rambert on tours to Europe (1946) and America (1947). She also danced with Ballets Jooss in the 1940s and trained with Sigurd Leeder (1947-1950).

The collection relates to Mlada's training and performance work and consists of photographs, letters, theatre programmes, music scores, and gramophone records. There are also newspaper cuttings of reviews of her performances and dances scored in Labanotation by Mlada.

Dancer, choreographer and teacher Maedée Duprès was involved in the British 'New Dance' scene from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Born in Switzerland, Duprès came to London in 1968 to study music and later dance. Duprès became one of the founders of the X6 Dance Collective in 1976, alongside other prominent New Dance practitioners Fergus Early, Emilyn Claid, Jacky Lansley and Mary Prestidge.

From 1975 to 1978 Duprès was a regular performer with the Rosemary Butcher Dance Company. After this she toured her own solo programme, and collaborated with many choreographers including Richard Alston, Siobhan Davies, Kate Flatt, Richard Alston, Ian Spink, Sally Potter, and Mary Fulkerson.  Her interest in music was reflected in collaborations with composers, such as John Marc Gowans and Christodoucos Georgiades. She was a member of the dance-in-education group Scaramouche and was commissioned to choreograph work for dance companies such as Cycles Dance Company, Spiral Dance Company and Extemporary Dance Theatre. She also performed for the Royal Opera, English National Opera, and Second Stride.

The archive documents her work in England in the 1970s and 1980s through choreographic notebooks; administrative papers; lesson plans; reviews; and publicity material. Audio-visual material and photographs record her choreography and own solo performances.

Motus Humanus was a not-for-profit, tax-exempt professional organisation, serving movement specialists and furthering human movement study in the tradition of Rudolf Laban (1879-1958). The Motus Humanus archive comprises administrative papers for the organisation.

The Natural Movement Archive dates from the early 1900s to 1990 and focuses on a method of barefoot dance founded by Madge Atkinson (1885-1970) called natural movement.

The archive consists of:

• Music scores, many of them annotated by Atkinson herself
• Dance notes in both written text and Atkinson’s own system of notation
• Photographs; scrapbooks of newspaper clippings
• Programmes and playbills (the oldest relating to ballerina Marie Taglioni, 1848)
• Various manuscripts giving insight into Atkinson’s training methods
• Posters and leaflets
• Periodicals
• Original costume from the 1920s and 30s representing over 25 different dances.

This collection comprises books and periodicals collected by the former dancer and researcher Pauline Hodgens. Pauline had a particular interest in aesthetics and dance appreciation and criticism, and this is reflected in the collection.

Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was a pioneering movement theorist and choreographer. He was a key exponent of a new dance form, now known as German Expressionist Dance or Ausdruckstanz, which was the dominant dance style of central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. He also created a written means of recording movement, Labanotation or Kinetography Laban, which is used world-wide today.

At the heart of his theoretical work is a complex system of analysing the characteristics of movement, particularly its pathways through space, and its ‘effort’ and ‘shape’.

The archive contains writings on choreutics, choreology, eukinetics, and observation and substantial material on Laban-Lawrence Industrial Rhythm, which analysed factory workers’ movements and also managers’ decision-making styles. The archive also includes drawings of human figures in various geometric forms and photographs and film documenting his life and work.

This archive reflects the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company from 1988 to the present, with the company still making additional deposits periodically.

The company’s choreography style reflects Shobana Jeyasingh’s training in the classical Indian dance form bharathanatyam through the prism of contemporary British choreographic methods. The archive comprises administrative papers, production files, videos and publicity materials.

This is a collection of books, periodicals, programmes and publicity material relating to South Asian Dance, originally owned and amassed by the ballet critic Fernau Hall and the dancer Marianne Balchin.

Stephen Chambers is a British artist and Royal Academician. This collection contains preparatory works by Chambers for the set and back cloth designs for Ashley Page's ballet This House Will Burn, as well as press reviews. Danced by four women and five men, This House Will Burn premiered on 7 March 2001 at the Royal Opera House in London and was performed seven times in March 2001.

These are dissertations by University of Surrey students submitted as part of the following postgraduate taught courses:

• Master of Arts in Dance Studies
• Master of Arts in Somatic Studies and Labananalysis,
• Master of Arts in Physical Theatre

The dissertations date back to the establishment of the Dance degree programmes at the University of Surrey, with the completion of the first Master’s programme in 1984.

V-TOL Dance Company (Vertical Take-off and Landing) was founded by Mark Murphy in 1991 and integrated dance, film, music, text and design into performances to communicate narratives and human emotion. V-TOL's movement style was highly physical and dynamic, and they toured small to middle-scale venues. The company also toured abroad and were invited to several European festivals and venues.

Education and outreach work were elements of V-TOL's artistic policy and encompassed workshops, residencies, lecture demonstrations and post-performance talks. Murphy also choreographed, directed, and created films for V-TOL and Northern Stage, National Youth Dance Theatre, Transitions Dance Company and Out of Joint. In 2001 Murphy decided to focus his career on film directing, resulting in the closure of V-TOL.

The archive contains papers, photographs, publicity material, and audio-visual material recording the work off V-TOL Dance Company. It also has materials on Mark Murphy's work with dancer Sue Cox before he founded V-TOL.

Established in 1930, the Women’s League of Health and Beauty was an organisation for women to exercise and socialise with an emphasis on exercise bringing energy and peace. Their motto ‘Movement is Life’ highlighted the importance of physical health for our overall well-being.

The archive contains magazines; publicity material; scrapbooks; photographs and administrative papers.

Yolande Snaith Theatredance Archive (1984-2002) records the work of this British choreographer who took a theatrical and design collaborative approach to her work.

She began choreographing professionally in 1984 and her work has encompassed solos created on herself, duets, small/medium-scale works for her own company and others and work for film and TV.

The archive includes papers documenting the company’s productions, tours and educational work, programmes, posters, photographs, and video.

The E.H. Shepard Archive contains the personal papers of Ernest Howard Shepard, MC, OBE (1879-1976), illustrator of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and political cartoonist for the satirical magazine Punch.

Material includes drawings and sketchbooks, letters written whilst serving in World War One, notebooks created during his service in the Surrey Home Guard in World War Two, and business papers and correspondence.

The HarperCollins Publishers Limited Collection contains original drawings for the colour editions of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

The collection chiefly consists of the colour illustrations created by the illustrators E.H. Shepard and Mark Burgess. These include: hand-coloured illustrations by Shepard, based on copies of his original drawings; hand-coloured illustrations by Burgess, based on copies of Shepard’s original drawings; and original coloured illustrations by Burgess.

Also included in the collection are: six original pen and ink illustrations by Shepard for the 1931 edition of The Wind in the Willows; a small quantity of Shepard's correspondence with Methuen Children's Books Ltd; a series of Methuen & Co. Ltd working files relating to Shephard's illustrations of the Winnie-the-Pooh books; and a collection of published works featuring illustrations by Shepard and Burgess.

This collection comprises material relating to E.H. Shepard's early life and his military service, from his engagement to his return from Italy after the First World War.

The collection consists mostly of drawings created by Shepard, both commercially for magazines and personally during military service in the First World War. The collection also includes photographs depicting life before and during the War, and several of Shepard's belongings.

This collection of published materials was gathered and curated by Maurice J Summerfield, a British guitarist, author and publisher who founded Classical Guitar magazine.

The collection focuses primarily on the guitar, its history and craftsmanship; guitarists and guitar playing; and lutes and mandolins. A variety of music genres are covered including classical, rock, flamenco, Latin, American and jazz.

The catalogued material comprises books, music scores, programmes, magazines and periodicals, many of these being obscure or rare titles.

The British Guild of Travel Writers is an organisation of authors who write on the subject of travel, including those who compose guide books, writers of travel literature, journalists and photographers.

The records include:

• Papers relating to the Guild's constitution, rules and code of conduct
• Correspondence and notes on the origin of the Guild including reminiscences of founder members
• Minutes of meetings, annual reports and financial statements
• Newsletters and correspondence
• Membership lists and yearbooks
• Members' published articles and photographs
• Papers and photographs relating to Guild awards and social and educational events.

They also include the extensive papers and photographs of a former member, James Holloway (d. 1997).

This rare books collection was the personal library of Thomas Henry Farrer (1819-1899). Farrer, formerly of Abinger Hall in Surrey, was the 1st Baron Farrer and permanent secretary to the Board of Trade.

The collection is made up of over 2,000 volumes including a set of works by Charles Darwin (Darwin being a personal friend of Farrer), full sets of Voltaire and Rousseau, historically important first editions, and texts dating as far back as the 1600s.

Art, literature, history, travel, politics and science are all well-represented as was requisite in a well-rounded education of that era.