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‘For better or for verse’: A Colonial Service retrieval project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Anthony Kirk-Greene
Anthony Kirk-Greene*
Affiliation:
St. Antony's College, Oxford
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Extract

      There was a young man called Purves
      Who joined the Colonial Service.
      After a month in the bush
      He was given the push
      - Africans made him feel nervous.
      An elegant candidate nurse
      Appeared before Major Ralph Furse.
      When offered a post
      In Fiji or Gold Coast,
      She said ‘I can't think of anywhere worse’.

I have been invited to talk about a Colonial Service (CS) retrieval project undertaken with the anointment of John Pinfold at Rhodes House Library and the blessing of Terry Barringer of the Royal Commonwealth Society Library (despite her emigration lock, stock and barrel to Cambridge). I launched it in October 1996 in the pages of the Overseas pensioner (giving me immediate access to some 5,000 readers). The collection closed in March 1998.

Type
Articles
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 78 , 1998 , pp. 25 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © African Research & Documentation 1998

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Footnotes

This article represents the edited text of a talk given to the Annual Conference and AGM of SCOLMA held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, 23rd June 1998.