Papers, 1851-1919, relating to the military career of Sir Archibald Alison, including: detailed sketch map of Lucknow Garrison, India, 1851; memoranda to Alison from Lt Gen Sir Colin Campbell, Commander of British expedition to suppress Indian Mutiny, concerning troop movements, India, and operations at Lucknow for the relief of Lucknow Garrison, India, 1857; correspondence relating to British military operations in India, 1858-1862; records of service and correspondence relating to Alison's appointments, 1858-1892, with correspondents including Sir Henry Thurston Holland, 1st Lord Knutsford, Secretary of State for the Colonies, George William Frederick Charles, 2nd Duke of Cambridge, Commander in Chief of the British Army, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Secretary of State for War; press cuttings relating to Alison's career, 1863-1907, including article, 'The brains of the Army', The Word, 17 Nov 1880, detailing the work of the Intelligence Department under Alison; official correspondence, 1868-1892; lithograph map of the battle of Amoaful (Amoafo), Ghana, printed by the Topographical Department of the War Office, 1874; letter from Alison's cousin, Gen Sir Montagu Gilbert Gerard, with detailed account of the capture of Kabul, Afghanistan, 1880; official correspondence relating to the campaign in Egypt, 1882-1883, chiefly concerning appointments, the state of the troops, organisation, and the necessity of retaining a permanent force in Egypt; memoranda by Alison, 1885-1886, on subjects including the Government of India proposals for a permanent increase in British troops in India, demobilisation in Egypt, Colonel Sir Charles Wilson's failure to reach Khartoum in time to relieve General Charles Gordon, and the importance of mounted infantry; notes [1889], by Alison on his career, 1845-1881; correspondence and press cuttings relating to Alison's death and funeral, 1907; correspondence between the Alison family and Blackwoods publishers, 1914-1918, concerning a possible biography of Alison; article, 'The European Brigade under Brigadier General Sir Archibald Alison in the Ashanti War, 1873-1874' by Major General Sir Charles Walker Robinson, Alison's son-in-law, [1919].

Published memoir Can you tell me why I went to war? A story of a young King's African Rifle, Reverend Father John E A Mandambwe, co-written by Mario Kolk, describing Mandambwe's conscription into the King's African Rifles from school in the Malindi area, Nyasaland (Malawi), 1939; training and service in Egypt and India, 1939-1945; postwar life in Nyasaland (Malawi) and South Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 1945-1964; impact of war service on his life, including recognition in the form of a pension, 1998-2007.

Draft and notes, [1914-1938], for a history of English public finance from the later medieval period to the Stuarts, mostly abstracted from sources at the former Public Record Office, London (now The National Archives). Notes, [1914-1938], on various topics, notably economic aspects of New Zealand, 1836-1845, Senegal and Gambia, 1737-1804, trade on the Gold Coast, Africa, 1750-1800, and the functions of the Board of Trade, 1744-1807.

Papers of Edgar Prestage, 1881-1949, largely relating to his work on the history of Portugal, 16th-19th centuries. Letters to Prestage from various correspondents, 1886-1948 and undated, relate to a variety of subjects pertaining to his work, publications and translations, sources and interpretation, and also to acquaintances and contemporaries, other publications, and some personal matters such as correspondents' health and families, and include six letters from Fortunato de Almeida, 1917-1933 and undated; 24 letters from Joao Lucio de Azevedo, 1914-1933 and undated; 13 letters from Pedro Augusto de S Bartolomeu de Azevedo, 1910-1927 and undated; six letters from Henrique de Gama Barros, 1908-1925; five letters from Carlos Roma du Bocage, 1915-1918; three letters from Sir Richard Francis Burton, 1888-1889, and 12 letters from Lady Isabel Burton, 1894-1896, relating to Sir Richard's translation of Camoens; 22 letters from Julio de Castilho, 1908-1918; nine letters from Harold Castle, 1903-1906; six letters from Fidelino de Figueiredo, 1911-1918 and undated; eight letters from James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 1905-1919; five letters from Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, 1905-1919; two letters from Pieter Geyl, 1923, 1926; letter from William Ewart Gladstone, 1893, congratulating Prestage on Letters of a Portuguese nun ; ten letters from Edward Heawood, 1922-1933; letter from Benjamin Jowett, 1887, explaining entrance examinations at Oxford; five letters from Margery Lane, 1927 and undated; six letters from Manuel de Oliveira Lima, 1910-1927; two letters, 1928, 1932, from Manuel II, King of Portugal, concerning the monarch's bibliography of early Portuguese books; eight letters from Jacinto Octavio Picon, 1911-1920; seven letters from Jacinto Inacio de Brito Rebelo, 1895-1908; eight letters from Jaime Batalha Reis, 1894-1896, 1904-1905, 1922; 12 letters from Francisco Rodrigues, 1913-1918, 1930 and undated; two letters from John Ruskin, 1886 and undated, on the study of architecture; seven letters from Antonio Maria Jose de Melo Cesar e Meneses, 5th Conde de Sabugosa, 1905-1913; five letters from Luis Teixeira de Sampayo, 1921-1928; letter from Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, 1905, congratulating Prestage on Eca de Queiroz's The sweet miracle ; five letters from Georg Schurhammer, 1930-1936; five letters from Wilhelm Storck, 1894-1895; five letters from Herbert Thurston, 1905-1913; ten letters from Pedro Tovar de Lemos, 2nd Conde de Tovar, 1916-1927 and undated; 13 letters from Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, 1895-1896, 1907-1922, and 11 letters from her husband, Joaquim de Vasconcellos, 1897, 1908-1925; six letters from Afonso Lopes Vieira, 1910, 1914, 1927 and undated; five letters from Tomas Maria de Almeida Manuel de Vilhena, 8th Conde de Vila Flor, 1925-1929 and undated; letter from Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, [1892], regretting he cannot send a copy of his unnamed play (perhaps Lady Windermere's Fan ) as it has not yet been published. There is also a letter of 1881 from Antonio Candido Goncalves Crespo to Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho (father and mother of Prestage's wife). Ephemera includes signatures of Gomes Eannes Azurara, William Wordsworth, [? Isaac] Disraeli and Samuel Wilberforce; Christmas cards; the visiting card of S T P Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic, 1903; menus, including the House of Commons Coronation luncheon in Westminster Hall, 1902; a ticket to the coronation of Edward VII, 1902; and an invitation to a party at Windsor Castle, 1912. Otherwise the collection comprises research notes and transcriptions on various subjects and sources, including Restoration period Portugal; Sousa Coutinho; Portuguese in Africa, Brazil and Asia; the War of the Spanish Succession; 17th century Portuguese history, including diplomacy; the sermons of Father Antonio Vieira SJ; Portuguese bibliographies prepared by Prestage; annotated typescripts on the Portuguese in Abyssinia down to 1543, aspects and results of Portuguese colonisation, and Portuguese reminiscences (1948); Prestage's 'The Mode of Government in Portugal during the Restoration Period'; photographs of Portuguese fortresses in Morocco; notebook on 'Analyse das "Cartas Familiares" '; copies of letters of F de Sousa, including his embassies to France and Rome; copies of letters of Sir R Southwell, English ambassador to Lisbon; material relating to relations between Spain and Portugal; pamphlets and articles of Prestage; proofs for a chapter entitled 'L'Intevention Anglaise dans la Peninsule Iberique', in an envelope addressed to Prestage and labelled 'D Fernando & the Holy See by E Perroy'.