The Grey papers include those of Charles, 1st Earl Grey (1729-1807) and General Charles Grey (1804-1870), who both served in North America, and Albert, 4th Earl Grey (1851-1917), Governor-General of Canada 1904-1911. They provide official and personal material on key American debates in British politics, including imperialism, immigration and trade. The papers contain a wealth of correspondence, maps and printed pamphlets covering all aspects of British international interests from the late 18th century to the early 20th century.
The Malcolm MacDonald Papers contain much on the period of de-colonisation in the post-war period, but also document his 1941-1946 term as British High Commissioner in Canada. Papers in the collection of John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792-1840) cover his time as Governor-General and High Commissioner in British North America and Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada 1838-1839.
The papers of Tankred Tunstall-Behrens (1878-1939) document his work on various international border commissions around the world, including the Peru-Bolivia boundary commission 1910-1911.
Many of these collections have not been digitised, so that in these cases only the catalogues are currently available online.
If you would like to purchase digital copies of specific items from any of our collections, please get in touch.
If you are a member of teaching staff at Durham University and would like to use material from Archives and Special Collections within your lectures or seminars, we may be able to scan or photograph items for this purpose. Please contact us as early as possible with any teaching digitisation requests.
See also our guide to Digitised Collections Online for further information on our digital resources.
The collections mentioned above are located at Palace Green Library. Our current opening hours are as follows, but see also below.
For further information on visiting to use the collections, please use our enquiry form.
See separate Libraries and Site Information guide for further information on Palace Green Library.
Appointments are strongly recommended for all visits, please use the enquiry form to book. Please give three working days notice when possible and include a full list of document references or shelfmarks so that we can best enable your research access.
