A Baroness Looks at Her Mother’s Archives

Shirley Williams or more formally, Baroness Williams of Crosby was here at McMaster University Library on 21-22 August. Her mother is Vera Brittain (1893-1970), peace activist, journalist, feminist, and the author of Testament of Youth (1933); her father is Professor George Catlin (1896-1979). Both the Brittain and Catlin archives are located in Archives and Research Collections. Brittain’s archives have been used extensively by scholars. In particular, Vera Brittain’s diaries, ably edited Alan Bishop, evocatively and tragically document her experiences as a young woman in war-time, but the diaries are also uplifting and redemptive in showing the extraordinary transition in Brittain’s maturity of character. Originally a Labour Member of Parliament and then a founder of the Social Democratic Party, Baroness Williams has been a British politician most of her adult life. She was a full professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from 1988 to 2001 and thereafter Public Service Professor of Electoral Politics, Emerita. In looking at her mother’s archives, Baroness Williams was selecting photographs and other documents to complement her forthcoming autobiography.