Borthwick Newsletter - October 2026

Posted on 30 September 2026

Welcome to the Borthwick's October newsletter.

October in the Archives - delve into our catalogues with this month’s featured description

Exchange of letters between Paul Cadbury and Frederic Seebohm on Michael Rowntree's work with the Friends Ambulance Unit, enclosing account by A. Tegla Davies on work of Michael Rowntree with the FAU, [October 1948]. [Rowntree Family Papers, RFAM/MR/JRF/1]

What's New?

The university campus has come back to life in recent weeks with the return of staff and students. If you're visiting us in the next month, please be aware that renovation work in the library foyer is still ongoing and you will need to continue using the alternative library entrance (this is clearly signposted). However we are happy to say our public lift is now up and running again after its substantial makeover.

This month we'll be launching our annual 'Survey of Onsite Visitors to Archives', giving our researchers the chance to tell us what they do and don't like about visiting our searchroom. We also have some great new events in the offing, including a very special Goon Show tribute at Campus East and a deep dive into the classic Doctor Who serial 'Destiny of the Daleks' for the Third Target Book Club Compendium in London. Read on to find out more!

New Accessions

We received nine accessions in September, three of which were additions to the existing University of York Archive. Perhaps fittingly for the time of year, these included some of the most recent university prospectuses for undergraduate and postgraduate students, along with a Langwith College scarf.

We added a small collection of newspapers and newsletters, dating from 1957-1991, to our Southern African collections; as well as the archive of Reverend Richard Paten, which includes photographs of Mozambique, in particular the Port of Beira, between 1910 and 1965. We already hold a number of records relating to the Port of Beira in the Oury Archive.

Lastly, we added the archive of Dunnington Women's Institute, 1958-2025, complementing our existing WI collections: Records of closed branches of the North Yorkshire East Federation of Women's Institutes and Records of the Yorkshire Federation of Women's Institutes.

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st October 2026: 165,216

In September we added the complete catalogue for the letters of Norah Gurney to Robert McDonald. Norah is an integral part of the Borthwick's history, she began working here in 1956 and went on to become the Institute's second Director (and the first woman to hold the job). She sadly passed away in her early 50s but her letters to her friend Robert are a wonderful window into her personal and professional life. You can read more about them below in October's 'Archive of the Month'.

Borthwick Out and About

We had a busy September. On the 2nd, we welcomed the York Civic Trust to the Borthwick for a look at our historic guild records, followed by back to back events for Gary Brannan on the 11th-13th. He spoke to the Friends of Markenfield about the Ian Curteis Archive and our wider collections; then to the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society on the never-made west end musical 'Noah', written for Hancock by Galton and Simpson, with a score by Leslie Bricusse. Finally he represented the Borthwick at the Talking Pictures TV Festival of Film, where he mingled with Britt Ekland and John Cooper Clarke. If all that wasn't enough, we hosted a document display for the University of York Open Days on the 12th and 13th.

Looking ahead to October, we are going to be very busy with onsite classes and workshops for returning university students but we also have some external events as well. On 17th October, the Borthwick, in collaboration with the Goon Show Preservation Society, will be hosting '75 Years of the Goon Show' on campus as part of the York 50-Plus Festival. The event will feature rarely seen archive material and live performances of classic episodes. You can read more about it in the York Press or reserve tickets online.

Advertisement for The Goon Show event on 17th October 2026

On the same day, Laura will be presenting on stories of mental health from the Borthwick's archives at the annual 'Unconference' of CILIP (the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), held here in York. Then on the 24th October Gary will be delving back into our writing and performance collections for the Third Target Books Club Compendium in London. 'Exterminations in the Library: Revealing the Terrance Dicks Archive' will look at what survives (and what doesn’t) in Dicks' archive, which was gifted to the Borthwick in 2025, before taking a deep dive into classic Doctor Who serial 'Destiny of the Daleks' to see how one scene progressed from rehearsal script to the final published novel, through the hands and minds of Terry Nation, Douglas Adams, and Terrance himself. You can buy tickets to the full day of talks and guests through the WeGotTickets website.

Finally, if you find yourself at The Deep in Hull this October, keep an eye out for the 80th anniversary exhibition of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust which has been on a Yorkshire tour since its launch in August. It started in Cliffe, before moving on to Armley and finishing up in Hull from the October half term until December. Our Research Services Archivist, Lydia Dean, who catalogued the YWT archive, will also be speaking at a York Civic Trust event on 22nd October: 'From a Tiny Acorn: 80 Years of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust', as well sharing some insights into nature observations in the archives at the launch of the York City Nature Exhibition on the 28th.

Archive of the Month: Letters of Norah Gurney to Robert McDonald

What is it? 75 letters from Norah Gurney, Director of the Borthwick Institute, to her friend Robert McDonald in America, 1944-1973, with photographs and later notes by McDonald.

How can I find it? The letters are part of the Miscellaneous Documents collection and a full catalogue of contents is available at the link.

Why is it Archive of the Month?

Born in 1921, Norah Gurney (née Dewar) graduated with a degree in Modern History from St Hugh's College, Oxford, during the Second World War and spent the remainder of the war years working in naval intelligence. It was in 1943, at a tea-lecture in London, that she met librarian Robert McDonald, then a member of the US Army Air Corps. In his words, 'Norah took it upon herself to serve as a friendly guide to a newly arrived 'Yank'', and the two became good friends, finding common ground in their shared interest in the Dominican religious order. Her surviving letters to Robert in America, with his own contextual notes, begin in 1944 and run to 1973, the year before she tragically died from breast cancer at the age of only 52.

A young Norah Gurney in London, 1943

A young Norah Gurney in London in 1943, photographed by Robert McDonald

Described by her friends as being of a 'quiet disposition' (something Norah herself acknowledges to Robert), her letters offer a surprisingly frank glimpse into her private world. She wrote freely to Robert of her hopes of entering a Carmelite convent, a hope dashed by the fact of her short-lived marriage and her mother's unwavering opposition. Those years were marked by much unhappiness and uncertainty, but a job at Sheffield Public Library gave her her first taste of archival work and in 1956 she took a job at the Borthwick and there, it seems, found new purpose. In 1963 she succeeded Canon Purvis as Archivist-in-Charge of the fast growing Institute, which was then located at St Anthony's Hall in central York, and in 1971 she was promoted to Director.

Norah Gurney in the Borthwick's strongroom at St Anthony's Hall

Norah Gurney in the Borthwick strongroom at St Anthony's Hall.

Her letters describe her York life and work in fascinating detail. She arrived in a city on the cusp of great change. 'Oddly enough there has never been a University here' she had noted in 1956, but within a few years rumours had begun to swirl and by 1961 the Borthwick - and Norah - were part of the brand new University of York (an institution she has somewhat mixed feelings about!). Her letters make clear just how much work she put into the Borthwick and how much staff and researchers owe her for her unwavering dedication to sorting, repairing and cataloguing the vast diocesan archive, often late into the night (and even on weekends). 'I am now developing it… as a research Institute instead of the archive office it once was,' she wrote in 1972. 'It will always be the latter, but it could be so much more.'

But just as her letters make clear her commitment to her work, so they also tell us of her warm friendships with the neighbours in her first rented flat; of her pride in buying her own home and decorating it herself; of her first bicycle; her much-enjoyed visits from close friends; and the adventures of her beloved Siamese cat Simon who was, by her own admission, the terror of the neighbourhood.

Norah Gurney and her cat Simon in York, 1958

Norah Gurney with her cat Simon in York, July 1958

'Please don't worry about me', she wrote in what would be her last letter to Robert in December 1973. Her illness had by then progressed to its final stages. 'I shall have plenty of work to get through in the next few months as there's a lot I want to finish'. She died in February 1974, remembered in obituaries as one of the country's leading archivists, who ran the Borthwick Institute according to the highest professional standards and with great devotion. She was also, as her letters attest, a fan of detective and scifi novels, a cat lover, a keen gardener, and a good friend, sometimes unsparing in her opinions, but never dull.

We'll be back in November with more news and events from the archives!