A day at the Archives

I’ll admit to being somewhat terrified as I made my way up to the second floor reading room at the National Archives in Kew. With my belongings in a see-through bag and my freshly printed reading card clutched in my hand, I felt like somewhat of a fraud surrounded by the other visitors who (at least to me) seemed to know exactly what they were doing. There were people pouring over huge maps spread across multiple tables. Others sat hunched over tiny delicately-bound books propped up on foam, gently turning their almost transparent pages beneath the glow of reading lamps. A hushed silence and the smell of musty paper completed the almost reverential atmosphere that I was hesitant to disturb.

In the end though, the thought of being able to actually handle documents that Jasper wrote or would have read filled me an excitement that eclipsed any lingering unease. It still amazes me that we have such easy and free access to such ancient documents. No questions or need to prove why you want to look at something, just an aim to enable access to our collective past. 

And that’s the thing about history and the figures who populate it, they all feel so abstract until you’re holding a letter written in 1460 and signed by the person you have spent over a decade studying. Did it make me slightly emotional to see Jasper’s signature or read how he concluded his letters with “your faithful friend”? Yes, I’m not too proud to say it did. I may not have been able to understand half the documents I requested, given the ornate calligraphy and tendency to record everything in Latin (which where far beyond my GCSE-level skills), but that hardly mattered. I didn’t go to the archives to discover a new historical breakthrough from Jasper’s life, there are plenty of brilliant historians I can rely on for that. I went because I could, because I think it’s a privilege to be able access these things, and because I was curious. And those reasons are just as valid as researching a PhD.