Untold lives blog

The Ministry of Information was the British Government department responsible for publicity and propaganda during the Second World War. On 22 August 1940, Arthur John Arberry at the Ministry of Information wrote to Roland Tennyson Peel at the India Office, enclosing colour portraits of Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (ʿAbdullāh bin Ḥusayn al-Hāshimī), the Sultan of Muscat and Oman (Sa‘īd bin Taymūr Āl Bū Sa‘īd), and the Shaikh of Bahrain (Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah, erroneously referred to as the Shaikh of Kuwait in the letter).

Arberry wrote that the Ministry’s Far Eastern Section had ordered a large quantity of these portraits for distribution in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and that a caption would be added ‘indicating that these Muslim rulers support Britain in the present war’, in an attempt to foster support for the Allies amongst the predominantly Muslim population. He went on to request Peel’s advice ‘as to whether these portraits could appropriately be used for distribution on a large scale in the Middle East, especially in Hadhramaut and the Persian Gulf’, as propaganda.

This letter and the portraits, below, are included in the file IOR/L/PS/12/3942, which has been digitised and will soon be available to view on the Qatar Digital Library. 

Letter from Arthur John Arberry of the Ministry of Information, to Roland Tennyson Peel of the India Office, 22 August 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 19. 

Portrait of Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (ʿAbdullāh bin Ḥusayn al-Hāshimī), c 22 Aug 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 21.

The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Portrait of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman (Sa‘īd bin Taymūr Āl Bū Sa‘īd), c. 22 August 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 22.

The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

 
Portrait of the Hakim of Bahrain (Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah), c. 22 August 1940 . Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 23.

The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Arberry was sent a reply from John Percival Gibson of the India Office, advising him that ‘we think it undesirable to make any use for publicity purposes of the Sultan of Muscat’s portrait, chiefly for the reason given in Peel’s letter to Rushbrook Williams of the 23^rd January [1940]’. The letter referred to is not included in this file, however a draft copy of it can be found in file IOR/L/PS/12/2995, f 9. In this letter, Peel informs Laurence Frederic Rushbrook Williams of the Ministry of Information that ‘the Sultan of Muscat has asked that steps might be taken to prevent publicity being given…to Muscat. Apparently the Sultan is apprehensive that such publicity might draw unwanted attention to his country in German & Italian quarters’, and ‘We have promised to respect his wishes’. 

In Gibson’s reply to Arberry, he also stated that provided the Sultan of Muscat’s portrait was omitted, he did not think there would be any objection to distribution of the other portraits in the Middle East generally, but that this was more a matter for the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office. However, he added that ‘I doubt it would be worth the expense to make any distribution in the Persian Gulf, where the attitude of the Sheikhs is well enough known’.

Arberry further consulted the India Office about whether it would be politically acceptable to include a portrait of the Shaikh of Kuwait (Shaikh Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ), to which Peel responded that there was no objection.

Before the portraits were finally approved, Sir Hassan Suhrawardy, Adviser to the Secretary of State for India, was asked for his opinion on them. Suhrawardy approved the green border of the portraits, but thought that it should be an olive shade instead. He also advised the Ministry of Information that the star and crescent symbol should be omitted from the border, for the reasons stated in the letter below.

Copy of a letter from Sir Hassan Suhrawardy to E J Embleton, Studio Manger at the Ministry of Information, 5 November 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 11.

Susannah Gillard,

Content Specialist, Archivist

British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading

British Library, Coll 30/202 ‘Persian Gulf. Photographs of Notabilities (Sheikhs &c) (used for propaganda purposes)’ IOR/L/PS/12/3942

British Library, Coll 20/35 'Sultan of Muscat's desire to avoid wireless and press publicity during wartime' IOR/L/PS/12/2995

In this second blogpost relating to the US-UK Fulbright Commission Archive recently acquired by the British Library, Eleanor Casson looks at the newsletters of the British Fulbright Scholars Association (BFSA) and the Alumni of the US-UK Fulbright Commission. For more information about this collection, there is an event on 19 November 2018 called ‘Hidden Histories: Gaps and Silences in the Archive’; tickets are available now.

Over the course of 70 years The Fulbright Commission has administered grants to numerous high-flyers in a wide ranging selection of professions, sectors, and skillsets. Senator Fulbright’s main aim was to produce world leaders through educational and cultural exchange. The US-UK Fulbright Program has been a particularly successful Commission in achieving this aim.

From 1982-2012 The Fulbright Commission had a separate supporting British Fulbright Scholars Association (BFSA), which acted as a charity on behalf of the Commission. It also acted as a central point from which Fulbright Alumni could stay in touch with the work of the Commission and build social and business networks across the Alumni database. This blog takes a look at the copies of the newsletter recently acquired by the British Library as part of the US-UK Fulbright Commission Archive.

The BFSA Newsletter was established in 1983, it was sent out to registered members as a way of keeping the community informed about the activities of The Fulbright Commission and the successes of the numerous alumni. The BFSA received a grant from the US Embassy to produce the newsletter to a high quality and improve alumni engagement.

The newsletter went through various overhauls with changes of name and changes of focus before the BFSA moved away from paper copies and began to distribute the newsletter only online. The multiple BFSA events planned throughout the year were documented in the newsletters, including the May Concerts, BFSA Debates, as well as Annual General Meetings Talks. Amongst the articles and photographs of Fulbright events and fundraising efforts there were snippets of the Fulbright Commission’s community including; birth, marriage, and death announcements.  

The British Fulbright Scholar Association Newsletter, 1983-1988, The British Fulbright Scholar Association: Link, 1989-2000, and The Fulbright Alumni News: Linking the UK and USA, 2001-2012

Alongside the community engagement element of the newsletter there were also thought provoking articles from Fulbright Scholars about their chosen interests and often related to the study they were undertaking with their Fulbright Grant. The BFSA newsletter aimed to engage the audience as well as inform them.

This article found in the Spring 1984 issue No. 2 highlights how little politics can change in 34 years. Article by Professor David Walker

Editors of the newsletter included Mary Hockaday, a journalist who went on to become Controller of BBC World Service English, and award-winning Adeola Solanke, a Nigerian-British playwright and screenwriter. Profile articles were written about well-known and successful alumni including Katherine Whitehorn, journalist and columnist with The Observer. Profile articles were also written for the politicians Lord Bernard Donoughue, Baroness Shirley Williams, and Charles Kennedy about their life experiences. Sir Malcolm Bradbury, the author and academic, wrote a small piece reflecting on his time as a ‘Fulbrighter’ in 1955, as well as imagining Sylvia Plath’s journey and experience travelling the opposite way in the same year.

Eleanor Casson
Cataloguer, Fulbright Archive

August 20th is World Mosquito Day, commemorating the day in 1897 when Ronald Ross confirmed that the malaria parasite was carried by the mosquito.

The Library’s Archives and Manuscript collections contain a wealth of material regarding mosquitoes, malaria, and other mosquito-borne diseases. The records of the East India Company and India Office are particularly rich in information on research into malaria transmission, prevention and treatment, and hundreds of relevant records have been catalogued and are being digitised as part of the India Office Medical Archives project.

IOR/R/15/2/1062 Anti-malaria measures (1939-1947). See the complete digitised file at the Qatar Digital Library.

The work of Ross and other scientists, including Indian Medical Service colleagues, are often documented in records known as the Government Proceedings, found under reference IOR/P. This series consists of over 40,000 volumes, and information on military and civil health and sanitation within the Proceedings series has been made more accessible through item-level cataloguing.

A volume from the Proceedings and Consultations of the Government of India and of its Presidencies and Provinces, IOR/P. One of c46,500 volumes. See an introductory catalogue entry for the entire run here.

Malaria was long thought to be caused by miasma from rotting vegetation and foul waters, and thought to be a particular risk in hot and humid climates. The earlier records contain Medical Topographies prepared by Indian Medical Officers to designate ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ areas to inform the construction of hospitals and barracks.

Excerpt of a letter sent by Ross to the Government of India, relaying the observations and theories of Patrick Manson, and making the case for Ross's further study of mosquitoes. IOR/P/5185 Mar 1897 nos 141-45 

Drugs derived from the cinchona plant were used as a remedy for malaria. The records document the establishment of cinchona plantations in India in the mid-19^th century with trees and seeds taken from the Andes, as well as studies into the production and effectiveness of different preparations.

  Specimen instruction label for a Government-issued dose of quinine, derived from the cinchona bark. IOR/P/6579 Oct 1903 nos 119-23

Treating malaria and its symptoms is only one part of the battle against the disease. Once the transmission vector was identified, attention turned to preventing its transmission through the destruction of mosquitoes and their habitats. The records document the establishment of Mosquito Brigades and the development of Government sanitation policies in colonial India.

Details of preventive measures recommended by the military authorities. IOR/P/7053 Jun 1905 nos 200-04

Further resources

You can find more by searching Explore Archives and Manuscripts using the terms mosquito, malaria, or India Office Medical Archives.

 The National Library of Scotland’s Medical History of British India pages contain digitised reports into medical research in British India from 1850-1950.

The UK Medical Heritage Library provides access to over 66,000 digitised European medical publications from the 19^th century, including many on mosquitoes and malaria.

Alex Hailey

Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

To celebrate the launch of Discovering Literature: Restoration and 18th Century, Untold Lives takes a closer look at the letters of Jonathan Swift to Henrietta Howard.

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, poet and Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, chiefly remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726. Henrietta Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline and mistress to George II. She was noted for her wit and intelligence and she corresponded with many intellectuals of the day, including not only Swift, but Horace Walpole, Alexander Pope and John Gay. At the British Library we hold a series of autograph letters between Swift and Howard, written between 1726 and 1730 (Add MS 22625), which give fascinating insight into the relationship between these two figures.

Add MS 22625, f. 6r

Henrietta was a supporter of Swift and his works, and their letters have a playful tone. Writing as Gulliver, Swift begs leave ‘to lay the crown of Lilliput at your feet as a small acknowledgement of your favours to my book and person’, and in one letter he tells her how he is being ‘perpetually teased with the remembrance of you by the light of your Ring on my Finger’.

Add MS 22625, f. 12r

But Swift was not writing out of pure friendship and admiration. As the letters progress his ulterior motives become clear.

Queen Anne had disliked Swift and she would not consent to a church appointment for him anywhere in England. However, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, was outside of the Queen’s gift, so she had no way of preventing his appointment as Dean in 1713. Swift was unhappy in Dublin and he wished to have a more high profile post in England. So when George II and Caroline came to the throne, he hoped to persuade Henrietta to use her influence at court to raise his position in the eyes of the royal couple, so he would get the job he wanted.

Add MS 22625, f. 13r

Henrietta’s position was a difficult one. Queen Caroline and Henrietta were friends, but Henrietta was also the King’s mistress. The Queen could not allow Henrietta to undermine her and she made sure Henrietta’s influence remained limited.

When Henrietta failed to secure Swift the lucrative position he so desired, the letters soon take on a sour tone. He tells her that whilst others considers her sincere, he believes she only has ‘as much of that Virtue as could be expected in a Lady, a Courtier and a Favourite’, and given that ‘Friendship, Truth, Sincerity’ are ‘lower morals, which are altogether useless at Courts’, then he does not think her to be a very sincere and honest friend at all.

Add MS 22625, f. 21r

Swift never did procure himself another position, and remained as Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral until his death in 1745.

If you would like to learn more about this collection and the works of Jonathan Swift, you can visit the British Library's Discovering Literature: Restoration and 18th-Century Literature website. Here you can view these letters along with early printed editions of Swift’s work, as well as the works of many other Restoration and 18th-century writers including Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe and John Milton.

Stephen Noble
Cataloguer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

The British Library has acquired the archive of the US-UK Fulbright Commission set up in 1948 under the Fulbright Program for grants for international educational exchange. Eleanor Casson introduces the instigator behind the program, Senator Fulbright, and the Famous Alumni of the US-UK Fulbright Commission.

James William Fulbright (Bill) was born in Sumner, Missouri in 1905 to James and Roberta Fulbright. In 1906 the family moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Both his parents were successful local entrepreneurs. His father built up a small empire which included the local newspaper, lumberyards, a bottling company and a bank. In 1923 James Fulbright died suddenly and it was left to Roberta to continue the family business, which she did, becoming one of Arkansas’s most famous and successful business women.

The Fulbrights were known by some in the local area as ‘The First Family of Fayetteville’, they were a family of high achievers. Bill embodied this by winning a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University in 1924. The Rhodes scholarship and Fulbright’s time in Oxford had a profound effect on him. He immersed himself in his studies, but also embraced the cultural differences of England: from the frivolous such as tea drinking and joining the rugby team, to the more enduring like his admiration of British institutions, systems and politics.

Fulbright’s career, outside of the family business, began in 1939 when he was named President of the University of Arkansas. He was 34, the youngest college head in the United States at that time, he was also unqualified for the job, but passionate about education in Arkansas. This lasted until 1941 when he was ousted from his position by the new Governor Homer Adkins.  

In 1942 Fulbright began his thirty-two year career in Congress running for election in Northwest Arkansas. His experiences in Europe had inspired a deep interest in international affairs and his experience at the University of Arkansas had cemented his belief that education could be used as a tool in international affairs. He spent his political career campaigning for tolerance and appreciation of other cultures. His first act as a Congressman was to co-sponsor the Fulbright-Connally Resolution, the forbear of the United Nations. By 1944 he had won a US Senate seat and pushed through legislation creating the International Exchange Program in 1946.

The Fulbright Program was one of Senator Fulbright’s greatest accomplishments. To this date approximately 370,000 ‘Fulbrighters’ have participated in the Program since its inception in 1946 and the Program currently operates in over 160 countries worldwide. The US-UK Commission was established in 1948, since that time there have been over 27,000 Fulbright exchanges between the two countries. The awards span a number of disciplines benefitting everyone from artists to scientists, historians to mathematicians.

22 September 1948, Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin (left) and Chargé d'Affaires Don Bliss (right) sign for the United Kingdom and United States respectively, establishing the Fulbright Agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. Fulbright Papers (MS/F956/144-B), Series 86, Box 9, Folder 2. Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville. By permission of the University of Arkansas Libraries.

The aim of the program was to nurture the belief that experience and understanding of another culture will contribute to ‘joint ventures for mutually constructive and beneficial purposes’. This belief was reflected throughout his career which led him to become known as the ‘dissenter’. He participated in the censuring of Senator McCarthy, argued against the Vietnam War, and was an advocate for liberal internationalism. Fulbright assumed the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1959 which he held until he lost his seat 1974, the longest serving chairman in the committee’s history. He was presented with the Medal of Freedom by his protégé President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Senator Fulbright at the 40^th Anniversary Reception of the Fulbright Program, 1986.  ©The American. By permission of The American.

Eleanor Casson
Cataloguer, Fulbright Archive

Further reading:

Coffin, Tristram, Senator Fulbright, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, (1967)

‘The Fulbright Program, 1946-1996: An Online Exhibit- Expansion in Europe’, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville. Accessed: 14/05/2018 https://libraries.uark.edu/specialcollections/exhibits/fulbrightexhibit/bi2pic.html

Woods, Randall Bennett, Fulbright: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1995)

Woods, Randall Bennett, ‘Fulbright, J. William’, (American National Biography: 2000). Accessed: 14/05/2018 https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0700698

Anyone with an interest in early printed books should certainly celebrate the 150^th anniversary of Robert Proctor’s birth. A debt of gratitude is owed to the librarian and bibliographer, who had a special talent for identifying early printing types and on that basis consolidated a method for arranging incunabula, books printed in the 15^th century.

Proctor disappeared in September 1903 whilst hiking in the Tyrol, but his work during his short energetic life did much to make a science of bibliography. The impact of the publication of his Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum was figuratively likened to "the launching of HMS Dreadnought". The 'Proctor Order' is still used, giving numbers to printed items arranged geographically and chronologically: first by country, in printing order; then within each country by town, chronologically; then within each town by printer.

 When we are struck by the accomplishments of remarkable people, it’s natural to look for the things that made them click. Proctor’s Diaries written from 1899-1903, provide insights into his day-to-day work, his interests, joys, frustrations, thoughts and opinions. Today Twitter serves this function for many librarians, and so to celebrate Proctor’s birthday we thought we might gift him a Twitter account! What might he have tweeted?

If Proctor had a Twitter account it might have looked like this...

Proctor’s energy and industry is immediately apparent when reading his diaries. We might wonder if he had some kind of thaasophobia – he was never idle. He could have been a prolific Tweeter.

As a librarian he documented his work at the British Museum: cataloguing, acquisitions, visitor interviews, and work on the printed subject index. He also recorded the weather, often with a touch of poetry, aware of its natural magic and dynamism. He could be expected to have tweeted images from the books he worked with, but it’s often illuminating to look at the other interests of people normally associated with a particular area.

For instance, Proctor lived in a house with his mother, and loved gardening. We picture him setting wire fences, chopping logs, picking flowers and making jam.

He recorded the books he read on train journeys and those he read to his mother; he could have tweeted, “#amreading Zola (to mother)”. Proctor kept up his diary during his holidays, and these contain succinct (tweetable) reviews: “not to be commended, but certainly cheap”, “landlord excellent” etc.

Some diaries and much of social media can be mundane and turgid. The interesting stuff comes with those things that reflect the deeper and more meaningful sides of a character. Proctor’s diaries offer an interesting record of his views and opinions. It is well known that Proctor was greatly influenced by the aesthetics and politics of his idol William Morris and we see plenty of examples of Proctor’s ‘radicalism’.

"The bottom of the sea seems the best place for France - but I doubt whether her injustice towards Dreyfus is a greater crime than the behaviour of our Government & Press to the Boers", diary entry for 9 Sep 1899. Add MS 50190-50196.

Many people with social media accounts which identify an employer state in their profiles, ‘opinions my own’ or ‘not tweeting in an official capacity’. Had Proctor taken to Twitter, the British Museum’s Department of Printed Books may just have insisted on this for @IncunabulaBob: on March 7^th 1900 Proctor wrote “London much excited because the loathsome Fatguts is defiling it. She is going to Ireland – may she leave her damned bones there.”

Fatguts, and 'the Old Washerwoman of Windsor', were Proctor's insulting names for Queen Victoria.

Other pages in Proctor's diaries display quite touching gestures of his sincere beliefs.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity written in red pen at the top of the first page of the second volume of Proctor's diaries.

 Further reading

J H Bowman, ed., A critical edition of the private diaries of Robert Proctor (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010). Open Access Rare Books and Music Reading Room, RAR 027.541

The Private Diary of Robert Proctor. Reprinted from the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 1951.010856.k.6

Christian Algar,

Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

One of our manuscripts is currently enjoying a much-needed change of scene in the Lake District, on display as part of the Wordsworth House and Garden's Where Poppies Blow exhibition.

Add MS 44990 consists of 62 manuscript poems by Edward Thomas, and is featured in the exhibition displaying his poem Adlestrop.

Add MS 44990, f 11r

Where Poppies Blow explores the themes of nature, the First World War, and the British soldier. Whilst nature was always present in Thomas' work, the latter two themes would become central following his enrollment with the Artists' Rifles in July 1915. Thomas was killed on 9 April 1917 at the battle of Arras.

Tommy with pet magpie. Image courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.

Curated by historian, farmer and author John Lewis-Stempel, Where Poppies Blow also features original artworks by John and Paul Nash, items collected by soldiers during the war, and panel excerpts from Dave McKean's graphic novel Black Dog: the Dreams of Paul Nash.

John Lewis-Stempel outside Wordsworth House. Photograph by Zoe Gilbert, National Trust.

The exhibition is open now until Sunday 8 July. 

To publicise our upcoming event Dear John: The 'Kin Selection' Controversy presented by the British Library and Undercurrent Theatre, we present the last of three blogs by PhD student Helen Piel on evolutionary biologists George Price, William D. Hamilton and John Maynard Smith. 

John Maynard Smith c1965. © University of Sussex

John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) was one of Britain’s most eminent evolutionary biologists. His career spanned half a century, first at University College London, and then from 1965 at the University of Sussex. Educated at Eton, Cambridge (where he took a first degree in engineering, working as an aircraft stressman during and briefly after the Second World War) and UCL, he showed a remarkable ability to discern and describe biological problems and to ‘do the sums’: Maynard Smith brought his mathematical abilities and trust in models over into biology from his earlier education and training.

At UCL he studied and later worked under J B S Haldane, one of the founding fathers of neo-Darwinism (the merger between Darwin's theory of natural selection and Mendelian genetics). In the laboratory of Helen Spurway, Maynard Smith worked on genetics with the fruit fly Drosophila subobscura and later tackled the questions of ageing and sex. After his move to Sussex he focused increasingly on theoretical questions, and in 1973 published a seminal paper on ‘The Logic of Animal Conflict’, together with George R Price. The paper combined evolutionary biology and an idea taken from economics (game theory) to suggest a new way of studying animal behaviour: in evolutionary game theory, individual animals are pitted against each other like players in a game. In 1999, Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize (biology’s equivalent to a Nobel Prize) for his work on evolutionary game theory. 

John Maynard Smith c 1984. © University of Sussex

Maynard Smith was also known for his successful efforts to communicate evolutionary biology to a broader public, writing his first book The Theory of Evolution in 1958. He published various essay collections and The Origins of Life (1999), a ‘birdwatchers’ version’ of one of his books aimed more at a specialist audience (both co-authored with Eörs Szathmáry). From the 1960s he regularly appeared on radio and television, and was a frequent guest on the radio show Who Knows?, where a panel answered questions sent in by the public.

Smith also contributed as a scientific advisor to programmes, and narrated the Horizon episode ‘The Selfish Gene’, based on Richard Dawkins’ book of the same name, which itself was based on several of Maynard Smith’s ideas, particularly evolutionary game theory.

Although a theoretical biologist who avoided fieldwork throughout his career - his bad eyesight had dissuaded him from joining fellow undergraduates who went on to study under the famous ethnologist Niko Tinbergen at Oxford - his love for nature was obvious in his avid gardening. During summers he would open his garden to the public, and his Who's Who entry cites 'gardening' as one of his two favourite recreations. The second was 'talking'.

Helen Piel
Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD student, University of Leeds and the British Library

Further reading:

Helen Piel (2017). Local Heroes: John Maynard Smith: (1920-2004): A good "puzzle-solver" with an "accidental career". The British Library, Science Blog.

Marek Kohn (2004). A Reason for Everything. Natural Selection and the English Imagination. London: faber and faber.

John Maynard Smith (1985). In Haldane’s footsteps. In: D. A. Dewsbury (ed.) Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior: Autobiographical Perspectives (pp.347-354). Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.