Search FNL grants since 1931

The testament of Alexander Jaffray is a unique manuscript of major regional and national significance. Original documents that shed light on religious belief in 17th-century Scotland are extremely rare. This manuscript is an extraordinary example of an individual articulating their moral and spiritual viewpoint at a time of significant change within society.

Eton has acquired this archive, which had been on loan to the library for the past ten years. It consists of autograph scores of 55 major orchestral and chamber works by Arnold, including two symphonies and 13 concertos. There are manuscripts of six choral works and music for 25 films and TV programmes, as well as much music for solo instrument and for voice. Also included in the archive are fifty autograph letters to Arnold from luminaries of music and the arts

The curious nature of the manuscript itself may well have accounted for the price - it is a miscellany of personal thoughts and reflections on national events, human nature or the weather, but frequently relating to the textile industry in which the compiler, John Brearley of Wakefield, was engaged as a cloth ‘frizzer’. His interest in his industry is also evident in this manuscript, which he compiled in 1772-73, and includes 140 line-drawings to illustrate his ideas about the machinery of the day.

The conduct of services is the primary function of York Minster, the mother church of the Northern Province, and the records of those services are, therefore, of prime importance for the study of its history, the history of the province and the history of the wider Church in England. Printed ephemera, in particular orders of service, are, where available, the best source of information about services held at the Minster.

Qâdi Zâda Al-Rûmî (1364–1436) was a Turkish astronomer who worked at the observatory in Samarkand, under the direction of Ulugh Beg (d. 1449). He made an important contribution to the flowering of Arabic science in Timurid Iran as one of the authors of a new star catalogue (the Zīj-i Sulṭānī) and a textbook on arithmetic. The present work is a commentary on al-Jaghmini’s introduction to astronomy and the most widely circulated Arabic treatise on Ptolemaic cosmology. This acquisition enhances the College’s strong collection of scientific books.

The importance of the document in terms of understanding Swindon’s development as a town through the ages cannot be understated. Nowadays, the town is closely associated with the Great Western Railway, which certainly put the town on the map. However, prior to Brunel & Co. laying down the famous train line between Bristol and London, Swindon was a vibrant and locally important market town, as ordained by this Charter.

This diary chiefly covers the years 1940-1942, when Ayers travelled the country with Michael Rothenstein who was then working for the Recording Britain project. This had been devised by Kenneth Clark as a means of employing artists in wartime, to document threatened landscapes and ways of life, and to encourage the characteristically British art of watercolour. The project assembled some 1,500 topographical paintings and drawings (including over 40 by Rothenstein) which were given to the V&A by the Pilgrim Trust in 1949. The diary provides context for the creation of Rothenstein’s pictures; it also describes in frank, passionate detail the emotional dynamics of the often fraught marriage of two artists.

Thomas Plume's Library is an extraordinary survival. In 1704 Dr Thomas Plume (1630-1704), Archdeacon of Rochester, bequeathed his collection of c. 8,000 books to his birthplace, Maldon, to establish a public lending library in the redundant Church of St Peter.In the early 20th-century, when Thomas Plume’s Library was still a lending institution, many books went missing. Since 1987 the Trustees have been actively buying replacement books – in a few cases the originals.

The Andersonian Naturalists’ Society, founded in 1885, is amongst the earliest student societies at the University of Strathclyde. The purchase of these albums has helped us fill a clear gap in the University Archives – we had no photographs amongst our records of the Society and, furthermore, no records of the Society at all before 1930.

A rare and fascinating volume containing two editions of Josuah [Joshua] Sylvester’s mourning poetry for Prince Henry. The volume contains the bookplate of the bibliophile Sir Thomas Brooke (1830-1908) of Armitage Bridge House, near Huddersfield. The privately printed catalogue of his library from 1891 suggests that the editions were not bound together at that point.