5: Person Despatches to Secretaries of State for Colonies, 1918-1920

Containers:

Box 2

Component identifier:

Series

Content Summary:

Copies of personal despatches to the Secretaries of State for the Colonies, January 1918-9 July 1920. The Secretaries of State were Walter Long until December 1918 and Lord Milner from January 1919 to August 1920 with Colonel LS Amery acting as Secretary from January to March 1920. This material continues on from Items 524-998 with weekly despatches, some drafts or incomplete letters and some duplicates of despatches. Sections of a few despatches have been erased. Some files have been placed elsewhere in the collection. Enclosures are incorporated into the file. The subjects include; general Federal political events with much detail about WM Hughes; the government shipping line; recruiting; purchase of 1918 wheat crop; Japan and the Pacific; the Peace Conference; former German colonies in the Pacific; Novar's general work as GG; the honours system; and the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1920.

Comprises Items 999-1294.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The papers were received in 1961 from Mr A.B.L. Munro Ferguson and the Trustees of the late Viscount Novar. Thirty photographs copied from the Novar albums in the possession of Mr Munro Ferguson were added to the collection in 1985. Subsequent additions include five illuminated manuscripts purchased from a dealer in 1990 and transcripts of extracts from Novar's diaries donated by Professor John Poynter in 1997. Six volumes of diaries, on long-term loan from Mr Ronald Munro Ferguson (great nephew of Lord Novar), were added to the collection on 12 January 2004. The diaries were kept by Lord Novar while he was Governor General of Australia between 1915 and 1920.

Access and use