The file begins with a letter from Barbara Brownjohn, secretary to Eugenie Strong, December 1926, telling him that E S is busy that day but inviting him to call another day (annotated by hand by E S to say she will be delighted to see him to talk about Baroque churches and palaces). Later letters and cards are dated 1928 (1), 1929 (2), 1934 (1), 1935 (6), 1936 (10), 1937 (2), 1938 (1), 1939 (2), 1940 (1). 8 cards / letters are undated.
Most items are handwritten but some are typed. Most are addressed to J G at Little Codham Hall, Shalford, Braintree, Essex. Many are addressed from E S’s address in Rome, 35 Via Balbo, but a letter of 1928 is written on Girton College headed paper and many of the cards sent in 1935 and 1936 are written on cards from the Albemarle Club, 37 Dover Street, London W1.
Many items are brief communications / notes of thanks / invitations to meet up etc but some longer letters discuss matters of mutual interest at length. The following transcript by Georgina Dunlop of part of E S’s letter to J G of 21 October 1937 is included by way of example:
‘It was disappointing not to see you here but I was glad you went to Greece while all the youthful enthusiasm is still upon you; I can only comment and praise you for having limited your reading to Byron, Homer - Pope, and the immortal Baedeker, as 'immortal' as any of them. I get bored stiff of all the little books of travel by ignorant people who have never stopped to look at a monument of a landscape or a work of art, or to think these over; better crude impression provided they are real. I do not quite share all your admiration for Greek architecture; it is serene and therefore often lovely, but it can run to monotony. It has not yet discovered those more complicated chords which were to give us Western Architecture - Gothic and our dear Baroque. It was the same with their art - so beautiful on the whole but so limited in range and interest..... How amusing the side-lights you throw on the Coronation. Naturally the nice little king has reacted to his position; what you say of him reminds me of what one man says to another in a book I am just reading, 'The last Puritan' by Santayana - 'You had to live up to the fine sentiments assigned to you and you ended by acquiring them' - not an unusual transformation. What happened was doubtless inevitable, but my sympathies were and still are with Edward VIII; and why should you doubt that his marriage would be happy or think they would part after a few months? I imagine the lady is made of the Katherine Parr stuff and likely to keep him, but I wonder if he will not give trouble in time with his labour sympathies and interferences - - -'.
The file also contains a letter to J G from Roger Hinks of the Dept of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, 19 November 1935, offering to help him with an essay and mentioning an ‘incoherent letter from our Roman friend’.