The material covers much of Lord Duncan-Sandys public life. Papers, reports and correspondence document the ministries in which he served and there are also constituency correspondence, speeches, publications, press cuttings and photographs. A number of papers exist relating to his involvement in the campaign to restore Capital Punishment, the European Movement and the Civic Trust.

The collection includes Hugill's contemporary diaries of the Normandy landings and the liberation of France, photographs and a file relating to Operation Alacrity, an expedition to take over fuelling and other facilities in the Azores. It also includes his notebooks containing his manuscript draft for "The Hazard Mesh", his autobiographical account of his wartime exploits. Files 10 - 15 were deposited by Fanny Hugill and contain her papers regarding Admiral Bertram Ramsay.