Special Collections and Archives highlights: 2022 edition

Yet again 2022 has been a year packed with activity and fun! We’ve seen a number of changes for the Special Collections and Archives team; adapting back to life on campus, welcoming new colleagues, fully reopening our Reading Room service post-pandemic, and embarking on new projects. We’ve also had a bumper year for volunteers, who have been working with our theatre collections, British Cartoon Archive, and medieval and early modern manuscripts.  

As is tradition, it’s time for us to take a step back, reflect on what we’ve achieved, and tell you about some of the highlights… 

Karen (Special Collections and Archives Manager) 

It’s been an exciting year in special Collections and Archives. We’ve seen a number of changes in our team. In February we welcomed Beth Astridge to the role of University Archivist – you’ll recall that Beth was our project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive so it was exciting to be able to welcome her to a fulltime position. Beth has made her mark already in organising and delivering some excellent projects – you can read more about that in Beth’s section. We welcomed Rachel to our team on secondment from the Collections Management team. Rachel is working parttime as the project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive continuing the amazing work Beth was doing. In the spring we said goodbye to Jo, who worked as our Senior Library Assistant for almost a decade. Jo now has a fabulous job in London – though she still finds time to pop in and see us occasionally! In the summer we welcomed Christine in Jo’s place. Christine is now firmly established as our Special Collections and Archives Coordinator. Christine is doing a brilliant job of curating already established and new content for seminar groups as well as assisting with the research and selection for our latest exhibition 100 Years: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.  

The logo for our T.S.Eliot exhibition, featuring a cartoon by John Jensen of Eliot in profile.

A poster advertising our Eliot exhibition, featuring a cartoon by John Jensen of Eliot in profile (JJ0584).

Clair and I had great fun meeting and working with Major and Mrs Holt to prepare their Bairnsfather Archive for addition the British Cartoon Archive – see Clair’s piece for a taste of what we have. We are also working on acquiring some other significant cartoon archives in the next year – which is especially thrilling as in 2023 we celebrate 50 years of Cartoons at Kent! Watch our social media for more details soon.  

Mandy has been beavering away making sure our cuttings collection is kept up to date as well as digitising the beautiful photographs of Canterbury that we acquired a few years ago. You can see some in examples in Mandy’s section below.  

Digitisation work has moved forward in a huge way this year. The Phase One kit is now fully functional and being put to good use – see what Alex and Matt have to say below for the latest from them. 

We’ve also been lucky to tempt our former colleague Jacqueline back to the fold – Jacqueline has been working as a project cataloguer to get the books from Carl Giles Archive catalogued. Many of the books are now available on our online catalogue with more to follow in the New Year.  

Earlier this year we received a small grant from UKRI AHRC to support some new collaborative research. We were delighted to work in partnership with our colleagues at the University’s School of Arts, Professor Helen Brooks and Dr Oliver Double, with Helen being primary investigator and Olly and myself acting as co-investigators. As a group, we were particularly interested in exploring representations of gender in popular performance, giving us the opportunity to contribute to the discourse on gender expression and new audiences with diverse, inclusive histories of performance and gender. 

A handmade poster featuring images of Hetty King, Dan Leno, and a costme design for a Principal boy, along with text advertising the event.

Poster for the ‘Beyond the Binary’ project

Beyond the Binary: Performing Gender Now and Then, brought together students, public researchers, performance-makers, archivists and academics from all backgrounds and from across the gender spectrum to undertake original research into our historic music hall and pantomime archives. They worked together on line to unearth histories of gender play and presentation hidden within the collections. 

The research group also had the opportunity to spend a day in Special Collections and Archives and  helped us to deliver a day at the Beaney Museum. 

The final event of Beyond the Binary took place on Thursday 29 September, with a spectacular show, Rowdy Dowdy Boys and Saucy Seaside Girls at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Canterbury. The event brought together music, comedy and history. This new performance-lecture was co-created with non-binary folk performers, the Lunatraktors and featured comedian Mark Thomas. The Lunatraktors created new work inspired by items in the collection, which were displayed on a screen and on the stage – including comedy boobs, which were displayed on a specially made stand (adapted from a music stand) alongside one of the pantomime Dame costumes worn by Eddie Reindeer. Mark Thomas performed a hilarious piece he had written on the day – again inspired by the collections.  

An image of two songsheet covers. On the left is Mille Hylton, 'The rowdy Dowdy Boys'. On the cover stands mille Hylton in a full suit and top hat. On the right is Hetty King's, 'Oh! Those girls! (those saucy seaside girls)'. On the cover we see a photograph of Hetty King, standing wearing a full suit and hat, and holding a walking cane.

Two songsheets: Mille Hylton, ‘The rowdy Dowdy Boys’; Hetty King, ‘Oh! Those girls! (those saucy seaside girls)’

This year we were also delighted to succeed in our bid for the Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants scheme. Our cataloguing project –Oh Yes It Is! – will be starting early in the New Year and will continue throughout 2023. The funding award will make an enormous difference in how we make the David Drummond Pantomime collection accessible to everyone. We will unlock its potential for researchers, historians, performers, and all those interested in the history of theatre and pantomime. We can’t wait to get started! 

A small pile of 12 theatre programmes on a white table.

Some items from the David Drummond Pantomime Archive

Stop the Press! We’ve also just heard that in the New Year we will be receiving material from the first British Muslim pantomime Cinder’Aliyah. I can’t wait to share more news about it with you all when we have the details.  

I think 2023 is also going to be filled with activity and fun!  

Beth (University Archivist) 

2022 has been my first year as University Archivist, as well as finishing off a few projects relating to the UK Philanthropy Archive, so there has been a lot going on!  

Highlights of the work on our philanthropy collections include researching and installing the ‘Exploring Philanthropy’ exhibition which was up from April to November and allowed us to display items from the UK Philanthropy Archive for the first time and introduce visitors to the history of philanthropy; welcoming Fran Perrin to the University to deliver the second Shirley Lecture on open data and philanthropy; and presenting at the Association of Charitable Foundations conference in November 2022, alongside Felicity Wates (Director of the Wates Foundation) and Sufina Ahmad (Director of the John Ellerman Foundation) about the value of projects that reflect on the history of trusts and foundations with some ‘how to’ tips about dealing with your archive records. A lovely celebration to finish the year was that Dame Stephanie Shirley – the founder of our UK Philanthropy Archive – visited Canterbury to receive her honorary degree. It was my first Canterbury Cathedral gradation, and it was wonderful to experience it with Dame Stephanie!   

A photogrpah of Fran Perrin delivering a speech in front of an audience. Fran stands in front of some windows wearing a red top and black blazer. The audience sit on chairs and face away from the camera.

Fran Perrin delivering the second Shirley Lecture, ‘Open Data and Philanthropy’

In University Archive work, I managed a team of amazing student interns who worked on a survey of the paintings, sculpture, photographs and other artworks on display in the College buildings. This survey led to some new acquisitions to the University Archive as we explored the Colleges!  We located the archive records of Rutherford College and also some of the records relating to the early days of Darwin College. These have now been added to the University Archive collection and I’ll be looking at cataloguing the Eliot, Rutherford and Darwin College archive collections later in 2023.  

We have put on some fantastic exhibitions this year which definitely deserve a mention in this summary. In June, with funding from the Migration and Movement Award Fund, we installed the exhibition ‘Reflections on the Great British Fish and Chips’ after working with a Research and Curation Group of volunteers, and our colleague Basma El Doukhi, who explored the collections and co-curated a display of original material looking at themes relating to migration, movement, global food production and the fishing industry. 

A photograph of a small group of people standing in the Templeman Library gallery space, looking at the exhibition.

The launch event for the ‘Fish and Chips’ exhibition.

With further funding from The National Archives’ Archives Testbed Fund we recently held a brilliant sensory event – Taste the Archive – where were hosted a food sharing viewing of the exhibition where we tasted fish and chips, falafel, ma’amoul, hummous and Arabic breads – all of which are featured in the exhibition. It was lovely to share food and learn more about other traditions and cultures in this sensory way. 

A photograph of six people crowded around a table of various foods.

The ‘Taste the Archive’ event

We ended the year with a new exhibition celebrating 100 years since the publication of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. This is a great exhibition featuring some unique items from across the collections so come along and see it before April 2023! 

Clair (Digital Archivist) 

This year seems to have gone by so quickly; it’s a little hard to come to terms with the fact that we’re already writing our highlights of the year! Nevertheless, here we are in December.  

This year I had the pleasure of surveying and accessioning the Holt Bairnsfather Collection. Major Tonie and Mrs Valmai Holt are a couple who live in East Kent. They founded Major and Mrs Holts Battlefield Tours in 1978, offering tours to the public of famous battlefields across the world, before becoming authors. Together they have published over 30 books, including a biography of Bruce Bairnsfather. Their passion for Bairnsfather began in the 1970s, and since then they have amassed an extensive collection of Bairnsfather memorabilia, artworks and collectables. 

Left: Major Tonie and Mrs Valmai Holt with their publications. Right: some publications from the Holt Bairnsfather Collection.

Tonie and Valmai welcomed Karen and I into their home to assess and survey the collection, before we listed and packaged it up for the archive. It includes pottery, china, books, journals and magazines, ephemera, metalware, sketches and artworks. An incredible collection, it really gives an insight in to the impact of Bairnsfather’s work and the popularity of Old Bill and the Better ‘Ole, even some 60+ years after his death.  

A comparison of Bruce Bairnsfather’s ‘Well, if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it’ (A Fragment from France, 24 November 1915) and Martin Rowson’s ‘Great War Studies – Module 8’ (Guardian, 06 Jan 2014. ©Martin Rowson, MRD0392)

We will continue to sort and organise the collection and hope to be able to add it to our catalogue in detail over the next year. 2023 brings the 50th anniversary of the British Cartoon Archive, and I’m sure this collection will play an important part in celebrating its continued value, and historic significance.  

A cartoon in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper', but the characters have been replaced with the Giles family at Christmas dinner.

Ronald Carl Giles, ‘Well, if you know of a better hole to spend Christmas, go to it!’, Sunday Express, 1954. ©Express Syndication Ltd (GAC0102)

We’ve also made some positive steps this year towards improving our digital storage capacity and structure, after experiencing some challenges over the last few years with third party storage and disparate SAN locations. This work will have a real impact on our ability to continue to preserve and protect our digital and digitised collections in a robust and standardised way.

Christine (Special Collections and Archives Coordinator) 

The greatest joy for me this year has been in planning and delivering diverse workshops in Special Collections and Archives to support graduate skills training and taught UG and PG modules. Over the course of 11 different sessions, I had the opportunity to meet and work with 135 students from the University of Kent and beyond, whose engagement with our materials established new insights and lines of enquiry. 

Delving deeper into the archives of Monika Bobinska and Josie Long – two stand-up comedians and comedy club managers – I got to appreciate the home-spun and community-driven nature of their endeavours. These were/are truly pioneering women in their sector who cultivated emergent talent by emphasising inclusivity and creative freedom. Their clubs – respectively, the Meccano Club and the Lost Treasures of the Black Heart – provided space for experimental performance and audience participation. Just look at these charismatic felt audience contributions representing stops on the London Underground… 

A collage of contributions from audience members. They are paper based and very colourful, including handmade images of a house, and another of Bow Church.

Creations that represent areas of London where audience members live (BSUCA/JL/2/6/4/4)

And this unassumingly pub-battered, pint-stained, contacts book that lists the crem de la crem of the alternative cabaret circuit – from Jo Brand to Mark Thomas.  

A photograph of the front cover of a black notebook with a sticker in the top right corner noting 'Cabaret'.

A contact books for the Meccano Club with contacts for comedians, agents and venues (BSUCA/MB/1/1/6)

Another collection I’ve particularly enjoyed getting to know this term is our Modern Firsts Poetry collection, which boasts an astonishing variety of rare small press items and even unpublished proofs from British and American poets of the 20th century. Some of our wonderful volunteers have worked on repackaging this collection this term in order to better preserve the more delicate items – many of which are loose leaves, single sheets, or folded or bound in intriguing ways. This hands-on work has enabled us to not only improve our catalogue records and archival practice, but also to uncover some truly unique items. With examples that are at once abstract and incredibly tactile, this collection surely epitomises Modernist aesthetics and critical thought; ‘these fragments I have shored against my ruins’ testify, too, to the enduring legacy of T.S. Eliot – check out our current exhibition celebrating the centenary of The waste land 

Rachel (Project Archivist) 

This year I moved into the role of project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive here at Kent, so a highlight for me was learning about the amazing collections we hold! This year saw us add two new collections to the Philanthropy Archive – those of the Wates Foundation and Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants. 

The Wates Foundation archive is our first collection from a fully family run organisation. The organisation was first set up by three brothers, Allan, Norman and Ronald Wates. The Foundation has three family committees, one for each of the brothers, which means that the work they support is hugely varied. The archive contains project files for each organisation the Foundation has supported, ranging from city farms, to local sports teams, to crime and drug rehabilitation. There is also a wide range of literature and media outputs from these projects. 

A photograph of four items from the Wates archive, including 2 VHS tapes, and 2 DVDs.

Four items from the Wates Foundation Archive

The Craigmyle Archive is a fascinating one, looking at philanthropy and fundraising from a different perspective from our other collections. Until now all our material has been from philanthropists themselves, whereas Craigmyle are professional fundraisers, working with charities and organisations who are looking to fundraise for projects. The company was founded in 1959, at a time where professional fundraising in the UK was basically non-existent. Their early focus was on supporting fundraising for schools, and there is a huge amount of material relating to all the work they have done in that area. The collection even has records of their work with other people who feature in our archive, such as Dame Stephanie Shirley, our founding donor! Clients supported by Craigmyle include Salisbury Cathedral, St. Paul’s School for Boys, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Kingston Theatre Trust and The Woodland Trust, to name just a few. This is by far the biggest collection the Philanthropy Archive has taken in yet, and a dedicated archivist will be being employed to work with it next year, so watch this space! 

Outside of the collections, my highlight for this year has definitely been attending the degree congregation at Canterbury Cathedral last month where the University of Kent awarded Dame Stephanie Shirley an honorary degree.

A photograph from the graduation ceremony. The image shows the following people standing together in a group (left to right): Dr Beth Breeze, Dame Stephanie Shirley, Rachel Dickinson, Beth Astridge.

A photograph from the graduation ceremony. Left to right: Dr Beth Breeze, Dame Stephanie Shirley, Rachel Dickinson, Beth Astridge.

I graduated from Kent in 2012, but this was my first time seeing a ceremony from the other side. Canterbury Cathedral is such a lovely setting for a graduation ceremony, it feels appropriately grand for recognising all the work put in by our students to achieve their degrees. This was also my first time meeting Dame Stephanie in person. We discovered it was honorary degree number 31 for her, but she was still incredibly grateful for the recognition and genuinely had a wonderful time in a glorious setting. The speech she gave referenced her support of the University, including her ties to our archive and her work with the Tizard Centre, and her message to all our graduands was heartfelt and really well received. 

Matt (Digitisation Manager) 

As Alex has alluded to below, after the install and learning phase of 2021, 2022 has been the year of the Phase One. It’s made a huge difference to our digitisation abilities as we’ve learnt to make the most of the whole system. As we progress with our pre-planned projects we’ve started to consider what it can do for us in the next years and the other collections we can digitise. When looking at collections we’ve had for years it’s exciting to have a new perspective on them now that we can digitise them in such amazing detail. 

We’ve also spent some time in the last few months refurbishing a new space for our digitisation systems so that we can bring it all into one custom space, (and also so that we can finally relinquish half of the Special Collections work room back to our colleagues). We’ll be moving in at the start of next year. 

A photograph of an empty room, with concrete walls , with white shelves high up on the wall.

Our new digitisation space in the Templeman Library

Earlier in the year we completed a project assessing our preservation and access systems for our digital collections which means next year we can move forward into testing and hopefully acquiring a new system that will mark a significant step forward in our digital offering to users of our various services. 

Mandy (Special Collections and Archives Assistant) 

Here are a few photos that I have been lucky enough to scan over this past year.

three images left to right: A black and white photograph of a delivery van parked up on a road, with the load on the back of the van spilling over in to the street. A black and white photograph of an elephant being paraded through Canterbury High Street. A man walks in front of the elephant, talking to a policeman in uniform riding a bicycle. A black and white photograph of a garage with a van in the driveway.

Three photographs from the Crampton Canterbury Photograph Collection

They are from our Crampton Canterbury Photograph Collection, and show how much Canterbury has changed throughout the years. 

Alex (Digitisation Administrator) 

2022 has seen the new Phase One photographic reproduction rig come into its own. Alongside colleagues Matt and Clair we developed efficient work processes for the digitisation of artwork and objects within the collections. Once we had the rig up and running in early February the main focus has been on the Beaverbrook Collection of cartoon artwork. The Beaverbrook collection is significant, containing original cartoon artwork by major cartoonists published in some of Britain’s leading newspapers from the 1930s through to the 1960s. To date we have captured around half of the entire collection, over 4000 high-definition images. I’ve found it a fascinating process, particularly the insight it provides to the day to day “talking points” during a turbulent period of global history. 

David Low, 'The Nightmare Passes', Evening Standard, 8th May 1945 (DL2416)

A David Low cartoon from the Beaverbrook Collection, ‘The Nightmare Passes’, Evening Standard, 8th May 1945 (DL2416)

In the audio-visual domain, I completed the digitisation the University of Kent Archive collection of vulnerable analogue magnetic audio cassette tape recordings in the first part of 2022. Since then, I have moved on to digitise of a number of smaller audio cassette collections within the greater Special Collections and Archives stores. These have included recordings from the British Stand Up Comedy Archive, the Ronald Baldwin local history collection and the R. W. Richardson collection of recordings relating to the 1980s Miners’ Strike, particularly in East Kent. 

A photograph of a cassette tape, lying on top of its case. Behind it is an audio deck used for digitisation.

One of the many audio cassettes Alex has digitised this year!

Most recently I have been digitising a series of interview recordings carried out by the University’s Dr Philip Boobbyer. The interviews were conducted during the 1990s in post-Soviet Russia. The subjects of the interviews were various activists and dissidents from the Soviet period. The content has particular contemporary relevance in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Jacqueline (Project cataloguer) 

I am cataloguing the personal library of Giles the cartoonist kept within his archive in the British Cartoon Archive. The library shows Giles’s distinctive set of interests reflecting both his work as a cartoonist and home life near Ipswich in Suffolk. He indexed books with coloured drinking straws to mark images that he might use as references. His collection of works of cartoons from the two world wars, together with contemporary photographic books give a poignant insight into lived experience of those events.

A photograph of books from the Giles library on a shelf.

An image of books from the Giles library

There are sections on farming, on architecture, sailing and ships and series of how to draw books, I-Spy books and even an Argos catalogue. The mix of ideas for cartoons and his everyday life appears here in his copy of ‘Teach yourself brickwork’ with “Lady Diana” written the other way up on his plan for a brick wall with measurements inside the front cover. 

A photograph of a book open to the front page. Inserted in the book is a piece of paper with an image of a brick wall drawn in red pen, alongide some measurements.

An image of the inside of ‘Teach yourself brickwork’ with an inserted note inside

Alternative Comedy Now

In the summer of 1979, two things happened which changed forever the face of British stand-up comedy. On 19 May, the Comedy Store opened in Soho – and a few weeks later some of the performers who had met there formed a group called Alternative Cabaret, described onstage by founder member Tony Allen as “a sort of collective of comedians, musicians, dope smokers, dole scroungers, tax evaders, sexual deviants, political extremists.” Taken together the Comedy Store and Alternative Cabaret kicked off a movement that became known as alternative comedy. This led to a radical reinvention of stand-up in terms of both form and content, and created what grew into today’s live comedy scene.

1984 flyer for Brave New Comedy, a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, featuring a young Paul Merton, then known as Paul Martin.

Alternative comedy was a youthful, iconoclastic thing, and many have made the point that it did for light entertainment what punk had done for music just a couple of years earlier. So it came as a bit of a shock when I realised that we were starting to approach its 40th anniversary. How could something so young and vibrant have started so long ago?

Clearly, such a milestone could not pass without being marked in some way, and the University of Kent was particularly well placed to celebrate it. Our Special Collections & Archives department contains the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA), which has an unparalleled collection of material relating to the beginning of alternative comedy. Its donors include key figures in the movement like Tony Allen, Alexei Sayle, Andy de la Tour, and Jim Barclay. We also have material from people who helped it spread across London and beyond, like Ivor Dembina, Monika Bobinska, Mark Thomas, and Ray Campbell. Indeed, BSUCA was started after we acquired the archive of the late Linda Smith, who cut her comedy teeth on the alternative comedy circuit of the 1980s.

Originally a venue, The Comic Strip collective quickly embarked on a national tour, released an LP and produced TV series “The Comic Strip Presents…”

A large selection of this material has been used to stage the Alternative Comedy Now exhibition. In it you’ll find publicity materials, photographs, press coverage, scripts, LPs, business records, and more. All of this is arranged into seven themes: the Comedy Store; Alternative Cabaret; the Comic Strip; the Spread of the Circuit; the Small Comedy Club; the Edinburgh Fringe; and Politics. The team from Special Collections & Archives have done amazing work in putting the exhibition together, particularly Elspeth Millar, Mandy Green, Karen Brayshaw, Clair Waller and Tom Kennett.

Poster, 1980. Smaller pub-based clubs were the lifeblood of the comedy circuit. The publicity materials took the form of homemade art that could be reproduced on a photocopier, like this striking example.

I’m particularly pleased that Jim Barclay and Andy de la Tour had time to visit the exhibition on a recent visit to the University. As Andy put it: “The exhibition is remarkable, I was quite bowled over by how much you’d manage to display.”

Oliver Double

Linda Smith Lecture 2018: Barry Cryer

May is always one of our favourite times of year here in Special Collections & Archives, not least because it heralds the annual Linda Smith Lecture.

Established in 2015, the Linda Smith Lecture is a celebration of comedian Linda Smith’s life and work, and examines the role of stand-up comedy in today’s society. We’ve had some fantastic guest speakers in the past, including Mark Thomas, Andy Hamilton and Susan Calman.

This year, we’re delighted to welcome Barry Cryer to the University to give the Lecture. A personal friend of Linda’s, Barry has contributed to this country’s entertainment industry for over 50 years. He has written for some of our highest rated shows and for many of our most popular comedians. His brilliant wit is still enjoyed by millions – in theatres, on television and radio, notably the iconic I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

The Linda Smith Lecture takes place next Thursday (31st May) at 7.30pm and is held in the Gulbenkian Theatre on the University of Kent Canterbury Campus. Tickets cost £6, and we’d love to see you there – please book your place now!

If you want to find out more about our incredible Stand-Up Comedy collections, please visit our website, our Stand-Up Comedy Archive blog or listen to the (brilliant, in our entirely unbiased view) ‘A History of Comedy in Several Objects’ podcast.

Eight women in the archives for International Women’s Day 2018

Hello all! March has rolled around again, and now that the snow has melted we can turn our thoughts to the other key event of the month. March is Women’s History Month, and March 8 is International Women’s Day. The theme of this year’s Day is ‘Press for Progress’, which calls on us all to reduce economic, social and political barriers to gender inequality. With this in mind, we thought we’d have a quick look at some of the awesome women whose stories are part of Special Collections & Archives to see how they’ve broken down barriers for their generation and those who came after:

  • Martha A. Hall

MA Medical Humanities seminar using Artists Books, 2017. Martha A. Hall’s work ‘Five Doctors Speak’ is on the lower left.

Martha A. Hall (1949 – 2003) was a poet, teacher, businesswoman and artist based in New England. Hall began making artists’ books in 1996, when she realised that her breast cancer diagnosis could be explored and communicated through creative means. Hall’s work explores lived experiences of illness, and she left her books to public institutions in order to spark dialogue between patients and medical professionals, as well as allowing others to express their feelings around medicine, health and healing.

In 2016, Dr Stella Bolaki and Egidija Čiricaitė curated an exhibition of artists’ books, called Prescriptions, at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury. The exhibition featured several of Hall’s works, as well as other books by artists exploring lived experiences of health. Many of these books (including two of Hall’s) have been deposited to Special Collections & Archives here at Kent.

Martha A. Hall’s books leave an extraordinary legacy, inspiring us to think about the relationship between our bodies, illness and the wider world. Not only does her art express how it feels to live with cancer, but it challenges notions of how narrative is told. You can find more information about Martha A. Hall here and discover Dr Stella Bolaki’s research project here.

  • Linda Smith

Linda Smith (1958 – 2006) was a comedian, writer and broadcaster best known for her work on radio shows ‘Just a Minute’ and ‘The News Quiz’. Born in Kent, her archive was deposited in Special Collections & Archives by her partner Warren Lakin in 2013 and is the founding collection of our British Stand-Up Comedy Archive. Smith’s archives give a unique insight into how stand-up comedy is created, recorded and promoted – and asks many questions of us in terms of how we collected and preserve material that is by its very nature ephemeral and improvised.

Every year, the University of Kent holds a lecture in memory of Linda Smith where we invite a guest to speak about comedy and its relation to social and political commentary. The event also celebrates Linda Smith’s life and work; previous events have featured Mark Thomas, Andy Hamilton and Susan Calman. Stay tuned for details of this year’s speaker!

  • Nowell Johnson

CH6422: Black and white print of Hewlett and Nowell Johnson at the Peking Dance School, China 1964.

Nowell Mary Edwards Johnson (1906 – 1983) was a Canterbury-based artist. She is most well known as the wife of the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury Cathedral, Hewlett Johnson, whom she married in 1938.

Nowell supported Hewlett’s passion for socialism, illustrating books with him (‘The Socialist Sixth of the World’, 1939) and travelling to many communist countries. Her diaries, which are held in Special Collections & Archives as part of the Hewlett Johnson papers, give a fascinating account of her travels to China, Hungary and Russia as she records in great detail her activities, the people she met, and the countries themselves. Nowell’s diaries are also beautifully illustrated – often in colour – as she draws scenes from her travels. You can see her determination to support Hewlett as well as her compassion for others and desire to make a genuine difference in the world.

Read more about Nowell’s life here and find out more information about the Hewlett Johnson papers on our website.

  • Valerie Eliot

Valerie Eliot (1926 – 2012) was hugely influential in editing and publishing her late husband T.S. Eliot’s work after his death in 1965. Valerie had been a huge fan of T.S. Eliot’s writing since she was a teenager (there was an almost 40 year age gap between the couple) and was determined to work with him. After T.S. Eliot died, Valerie inherited his shares in the publisher Faber and Faber and edited the 1974 facsimile edition of ‘The Waste Land’, which includes poet Ezra Pound’s annotations to Eliot’s manuscript.

Our Modern Firsts – Poetry and Prose Collection includes many pamphlets of poetry from small presses which have been purchased thanks to a donation by Valerie Eliot. Eliot College on campus is, of course, named after T.S. Eliot and the University was lucky enough to benefit from Valerie’s philanthropy (including a bust of T.S. Eliot by Jacob Epstein) up until her death in 2012. Valerie Eliot’s work in securing her husband’s legacy is vital, but her generous gifts to the University have made a lifetime impact.

  • Catherine Crowe

F191840 – Cover of ‘The Night-Side of Nature’ by Catherine Crowe

Catherine Crowe (1790 – 1872) was a Kent-based author who spent a portion of her life in Edinburgh. Crowe’s fame was established through the publication of ‘The Adventures of Susan Hopley’ (1841, turned into a play in the same year) but it is her later supernatural work that’s garnered long-term recognition, particularly the novel ‘The Night-Side of Nature’ (1848). Crowe had a breakdown in 1854, and after this her creative output was little; however, she was one of the most popular Victorian writers during her life, and it’s a great shame she’s not been recognised widely since.

The University of Kent holds one of the few archives of material relating to Crowe; our Catherine Crowe Collection consists of material relating to Crowe collected by the researcher Geoffrey Larken. Larken wrote a draft autobiography of Crowe as a result of his research, but couldn’t find a publisher for it. In a typical archive twist, it’s now one of the most frequently asked-for items in our collections, with researchers travelling across the world to see it.

  • Flo (Andy Capp cartoons)

AC3803: ” ‘e’s the sort of bloke you want to bring ‘ome to ‘is mother”, 10 May 1970, Reg Smythe for the Daily Mirror

What would a list of SC&A women be without mentioning Reg Smythe’s eponymous long suffering character Flo, wife of the eternally lazy Andy Capp? Flo and Andy are part of one of the most popular British comic strips of all time; it’s been running in the Daily Mirror since 1957. Even though creator Reg Smythe died in 1998, artist Reg Mahoney has taken over as artist. Living in Hartlepool, Andy and Flo are working-class characters. Although there’s debate over how they represent stereotypes of everyday people (Andy doesn’t work and prefers to spend all his time in the pub), the strip has been hugely popular both in the UK and across the world.

The British Cartoon Archive holds over 4600 Andy Capp artworks, which are requested regularly for exhibition across the UK and world. There was even a musical version of Andy and Flo’s adventures, which was revived in 2016.

  • Lynne Parker (founder of the Funny Women comedy community)

Funny Women Awards 2016 poster

In 2002, Lynne Parker established the Funny Women comedy group, which aimed to support and celebrate women working in comedy. The group runs workshops, networking events, comedy classes/open mic nights, and an awards ceremony every year. If you’ve heard of Bridget Christie, Susan Calman, Katherine Ryan, Andi Osho, Kerry Godliman, Sara Pascoe, Zoe Lyons, Roisin Conaty, Holly Walsh or Sarah Millican then Funny Women has done its work – it has supported all of those comedians, plus many more.

In 2016 Lynne donated material relating to the Funny Women community to the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive; it was catalogued last summer and everyone is welcome to view it. Lynne has also been a guest on our Stand-Up Comedy podcast discussing the work of Funny Women, so give it a listen!

  • Modern poetry and Crater Press writers

Anne Carson, Nox

Crater Press – Borthwick Riot Calendar

Verity Spott: Kate’s Dream Diamond Anti-Fatigue Matting Surface

There are so many fantastic women poets in our Modern Firsts Poetry collections, it’s impossible to pick just one out. We could focus on famous writers such as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf or more contemporary poets like Denise Riley. We could look at the revolutionary, intersectional verse of Audre Lorde. We could discuss the political-personal work of Grace Lake or the genre-defying literature of Anne Carson. We could also look at the role smaller printing presses, like the Crater Press, have in disseminating women’s writing and the space it creates for new dialogues. Instead, however, how about you come in and explore these wonderful writers?

Other utterly fantastic women in the archives include: Josie Long (stand-up comedian), Grizelda (cartoonist), Nina Boucicault (actress), the many women of the Melville dynasty, Monica Bobinska (involved in the Meccano Club) and, of course, the many many actresses in our theatre collections. As ever, do get in touch if you’d like to know more or visit us. Happy International Women’s Day! 

Martin Stiles Comedy Collection

Jon Shepherd, Assistant Archivist, writes about a new collection to the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive, the Martin Stiles Comedy Collection:

Alternative comedy: a style of comedy that rejects established stereotypes (especially racist or sexist) and often containing a political component.

In the 1970s traditional club comedians of the time often relied on jokes targeting women and minorities. A dislike of this led a group of performers at London’s Comedy Store to begin to pioneer an approach in opposition to the mainstream of British comedy.  It eschewed a reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes and punchlines, tending instead to be somewhat more free-form.  What resulted was more akin to comedy’s answer to punk.

Martin Stiles was and no doubt still is a keen fan of comedy.  He spent many years as a devoted follower of live stand-up, and both radio and tv comedy shows.  This led him to do two things.  Firstly, he created a detailed comedy index of comedians, producers and writers.  For each he listed the individual’s tv and radio comedy credits, often including the relevant year of transmission for each.  Secondly, he assembled a wonderfully impressive collection of comedy scrapbooks.  Stiles attended as a member of the audience the recording at the Paris Studio in Lower Regent Street, London of a vast array of comedy shows.  This he did several times a month, sometimes several times a week!  Each scrapbook includes newspaper cuttings, many from the Radio and TV Times, tickets for the shows and flyers sent out by the ticket unit to promote the recordings of the shows.  Some of these items are autographed by the performers featured.  The shows involved include many famous programmes such as Red Dwarf, The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Whose Line is it Anyway, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and Knowing Me Knowing You…With Alan Partridge.  Many were pilots and by necessity includes some shows which didn’t make it beyond the pilot stage.

Martin Stiles comedy scrapbooks

This methodically assembled collection reads like a who’s who not just of British comedy from this delightful period of change but also more generally of British cinema, theatre and public life then and now.  Casual fans and aficionados of the following performers may be interested in the collection; Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson, Robbie Coltrane, French and Saunders, Tony Robinson , Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Laurie, Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Harry Enfield, Harry Hill, Paul Merton, Rory Bremner, Adrian Edmonson, Rik Mayle, Nigel Planer, Jonathan Ross, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, John Cleese, Alexei Sayle, Jack Dee, Victoria Wood, Julie Walters, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, Ruby Wax, Tracey Ullman, Mark Steel, Jasper Carrott, Floella Benjamin, Humphrey Lyttleton, Clive Anderson, Robert Llewellyn, Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Graeme Garden, Roy Hudd, June Whitfield, Leslie Phillips, Shane Richie, Jim Broadbent, Andrew Sachs, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Peter Capaldi, Eddie Izzard, Geoffrey Perkins, Rupert Graves, Patricia Routledge, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Frank Skinner, David Jason, Sandi Toksvig, Ronnie Barker, Douglas Adam, Bob Geldof, Kenneth Williams, Wendy Richard, Martin Clunes, Danny Baker, Ulrika Jonsson, Morecambe and Wise, Meera Sya, Frankie Howerd, Les Dawson, Noddy Holder and many, many  more…

Items from the Martin Stiles Comedy Collection

If you fancy delving back into the fascinating world of comedy of the late 80s and early 90s then please contact us on specialcollections@kent.ac.uk or +44 (0)1227 82 3127.

Martin Stiles Comedy Card index