It may not be of much assistance now, but when I first started work at the
National Archives of what was then Rhodesia, the Director has a standard
opening to his talk to societies, clubs etc. which I confess I shamelessly
adopted. There was a film Carleton Brown at the Foreign Office which
starred Terry-Thomas. Those of you who are old enough to remember him will
know that it was not a serious work. The main thrust of the story was the
outbreak of unrest on a distant island in the Empire which no one had ever
heard of. They asked for the file from the archives. The scene in which
the file was retrieved involved 'the archivist' - a small, wizened man with
fringing hair and pince-nez who disappeared into the bowels of the FO,
extracted a file from a dark the top of a cupboard in a dark room and blew
the dust from it before taking it back upstairs. We contrasted this with
our obvious youth and vigour and the clean, dust free, well-lit, purpose
built repository we inhabited!
I suppose at least he was able to find the file which would be an
improvement on some of today's systems.
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