Scope and Contents

The letters listed below from Stanley Baldwin to his elder son Oliver are additional to those acquired by the University Library at auction in 1989 (MS Add.8795). John Boyle (1893-1969) was Oliver Baldwin's companion for thirty-five years from 1923. He had Conservative sympathies and great charm, and was liked by both Oliver's parents.

Scope and Contents

49 letters to Oliver Baldwin, containing mostly family and personal news, with occasional references to the strain of political life. There is also 1 letter from the Shropshire Archaeological Society to Stanley Baldwin, 17 June 1937, on his Earldom, and congratulating him for selecting Corvedale, a Shropshire place name, for his subsidiary title.

Scope and Contents The collection now at Cambridge has certain limitations. In the first place, it comprises only Baldwin's political papers: family and personal papers are not included. Secondly, it is perhaps more revealing of Baldwin's colleagues than of the man himself. As G.M. Young observed in the preface to his biography, Baldwin "kept no diary, circulated no memoranda to his colleagues, rarely wrote a political letter, and still more rarely made a copy of anything he did write". Thirdly, there is...