Stories from the collection

The Irish author completed this form to register ownership of a play titled ‘Dracula; or the Un-Dead’, and thus his seminal novel. It would prove important.

Christine Granville, Special Operations Executive agent extraordinaire, was Churchill’s favourite spy. How did this document possibly save her life?

In 1920, hundreds of members of the National League of the Blind (NLB) marched 200 miles to campaign for support. This printed circular explains what happened.

More than a thousand people who supported women’s right to vote were arrested for their activism. This document records them – and includes some famous names.

Is this the most famous anonymous letter in British history? Perhaps it should be. Without it, the Gunpowder Plot might have succeeded.

A handwritten letter written by sewing machinists working at Dagenham car plant who famously went on strike for equal wages in the late 1960s.

On the Windrush passenger list, white socialite Nancy Cunard (1896–1965) is described as a 'writer', but she was also a staunch activist for Black civil rights.

The police raid on a secret queer nightclub in 1933 gives an insight into the lives of gay men in interwar London and their defiance in the face of persecution.

Margaret Bondfield (1873–1953) was a trade unionist and Labour politician. In 1929 she became Britain’s first female cabinet minister.

Passenger lists for the ships that carried post-war migrants from the Caribbean to Britain can be crucial resources for people tracing their family history.

Was a woman arrested for murder in Victorian Liverpool an unfortunate person caught up in a series of ill-fated events, or something much more sinister?

Through documents held at The National Archives, we can piece together a great deal about the life and reign one of Britain's most infamous medieval monarchs.