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| 2017.0074 [MUSIC, ESSEX, ENVIRONMENT] |
| Date Range of Records: |
1972-2014 |
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The Greer Archive has been made available due to its historical and research importance. Statements which form part of the collection are not made on behalf of the University and do not represent the University’s views. It contains material that some researchers might find confronting. This includes: Explicit language and images that reflect either the attitudes of the era in which the material was originally published or the views of the creators of the material but may not be considered appropriate today. Names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in published and unpublished printed material, audio recordings and photographs. Graphic descriptions of medical conditions and treatment.
This series reflects Greer’s activities and interests in both her home environment and in the wider environments of Essex and East Anglia, which inspired much of her journalism from the mid 1980s. Records comprise correspondence, research material, copies of Greer’s newspaper columns and a small sequence of folders on music. The physical collection consists of 58 folders contained in 4 units.
Many folders contain Greer’s research and background material for her long running column, Country Notebook, written for The Weekend Telegraph (1999-2005), and her other regular columns in British newspapers, including Trouble at the Mills, for The Independent (1991), and Stump Cross Roundabout, which appeared from 1992 in The Oldie. Folders are arranged as they were packed from Greer’s record keeping system, and consist of three main sequences: Music (11 folders); Research and correspondence files ordered alphabetically by topic (35 folders); a selection of Greer’s columns grouped by subject, which are believed to be section headings for an unrealised compilation of her journalism from c. 1989 to 1999 on Essex and rural life (11 folders); and a final file titled “Grub Street” containing photocopies of extracts from three biographical works on historical satirists.
Much of Greer’s journalism in this period was written about The Mills, her property at Stump Cross, Essex, which she bought in 1986 between trips to Ethiopia, and her involvement in surrounding county life. Columns concern her immediate domestic sphere, her pets, wildlife, growing vegetables, cooking, the woodland she planted, her lodgers at the Mills. She also writes about aspects of living in the countryside, and events and issues in the surrounding villages and East Cambridgeshire, such as the controversy over building a third runway at Stansted Airport, the incursions of low flying planes from the nearby military airbase at Duxford and a proposed M11 motorway expansion which would directly affect her property. Many of Greer’s columns in this period contain Greer’s reflections on the changing face of rural England, her attitudes to development, and NIMBYism. Her reluctant acceptance of the inevitability of a third runway at Stansted put her at odds with the Stop Stansted Expansion Group (SSE), whose baleful Christmas card to Greer in the early 2000s read “How you can condone the rape of Nth Essex I cannot imagine" (Item 2017.0074.00039) and her interest in erecting wind turbines on her property set her against some environmentalists, such as the ‘Monsters on the Horizon’ anti wind farm campaigners.
The first box contains eleven folders relating to Greer’s love and knowledge of music, and includes sheet music and choral scores used for her own singing with Newnham College’s Raleigh Music Society, German lieder, Mozart’s Requiem, and a 45 rpm record of songs by the cult French singer "Renaud". Other files concern her subscriptions to ballet and opera and membership of Friends of Covent Garden. Correspondence includes invitations from the Royal Opera to write entries for programmes for productions of La Boheme and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The alphabetical sequence of topic folders begins with “Agricultural Chemicals & Genetically Engineered Food”, including information sent to Greer about the dangers of Glyphosate, continues with “Apples” (on making apple cider) “Bees”, “Biodiversity”, “Birds”, “Bug Life”, the Invertebrate Conservation Trust. Greer, with her passion for insects, was a supporter of this charitable organisation and became an Honorary Vice-President in early 2004. The sequence ends with “Wildflowers”, “Windmills” and “Wind Power”. This sequence also contains two folders of issues of Ethiopian News: The Monthly Publication of the Ethiopian Embassy in London (2002-2014), interleaved with invitations to Embassy functions, another example of Greer’s ongoing engagement with Ethiopia which is spread throughout her Archive.
Greer’s forensic eye is evident in her interest in local planning and development issues. Item 2017.0074.00038 contains her spiral bound shorthand notebook with her notes on change of use of agricultural land and the village hall, possibly made at a meeting of Uttlesford District Council, and files exist for the Great Chesterford Association, her local village conservation lobby group, and the locally focussed Cambridge News. Greer also kept a watching brief on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus at Hinxton in Cambridgeshire, especially the impacts of its construction and development. The final box in this series contains copies of newspaper columns selected by Greer for a proposed compilation of her journalism about The Mills and Essex. Her selections, taken from many of the papers she wrote for, are arranged under ten topic headings, beginning “The Animals”, “The Birds”, The County”. Item 2017.0074.00057 contains typescript lists of Greer’s Telegraph columns 1999-2003 by number, title and date published, with annotations by Greer allocating columns to different sections of the proposed book.
Series 2017.0074 references columns which are not all held within this series. The content description notes where there is the text of the column on file. Where able to be identified, the title and date of columns referred to, plus DT number (Telegraph reference number used by Greer for Telegraph columns) have been included in the content description, to enable columns to be searched for in Series 2014.0046: Print Journalism, the series which fully describes and contains copies of almost all Greer’s newspaper columns.
This series gives another entry into the Greer home front and subjects and issues which caught Greer’s interest and often resulted in a published column. It provides some additional contextual information on the gestation of her columns, and on her research. It also contains readers’ responses, positive and negative, to specific columns, which may not be held in Series 2014.00042: Correspondence or Series 2014.0046: Print Journalism. There are some delightful insights into the impact of Greer’s journalism in letters from readers, who for example, sent recipes for Iman Bayaldi (a Turkish aubergine dish) in response to Country Notebook: ‘Faint praise for dish that caused a swoon', The Weekend Telegraph, 28/2/2004, and tips on making the perfect Irish Stew (both to be found in Item 2017.0074.00022 Cooking). Letters, plus (dead?) ladybirds, “Found this lady bird climbing up dining room wall…” were dispatched in response to a Greer article in the Weekend Telegraph, ‘Invading ladybirds fly away home’, 22/1/2005, in which Greer asked readers to send her odd looking examples for forwarding to an entomologist for identification. (Item 2017.0074.00034). There were also heartfelt responses to her columns on wildflowers and her advocacy of the poppy as the County flower of Essex in ‘Vote for the poppy’, 15/10/2002. |
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| 4 Units (0.92m) |
| Collection Category: |
Culture and the Arts, individuals |
| Access Conditions: |
Access: Restricted |
| Finding Aids: |
Yes listed ONLINE |
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