ISG L&SE Tour of the Templer Study Centre, National Army
Museum on February 25th
This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. In honour of this, ISG L&SE are
visiting a number of libraries that have significant collections of WWI-related material.
We started this programme with a tour of the National Army Museum’s Templer Study Centre. The
Museum is perhaps one of the lesser-known national museums, but is well worth a visit in its own
right, and the Templer Study Centre provides access to the Museum’s extensive collections of books,
archives, photographs, prints and drawings.
Our group was welcomed by Kate Swann, Senior Public Information Curator at the Museum, who
gave us an introduction to the Museum and Study Centre. It is easy to confuse the National Army
Museum with the Imperial War Museum, but the two are quite distinct. The IWM originated as a kind
of national memorial to Britain’s role in the wars of the twentieth century and later. It covers all three
services and tends to collect official material. On the other hand the NAM focusses on the one
service, and aims to record the development of the British Army from the very beginning, so the two
collections are complementary, albeit with some overlap.
Today the Study Centre occupies a single room, its walls lined with clever swivelling shelving that can
be closed and locked when the Study Centre is not open, or being used for other functions. Only a
small proportion of the materials can be displayed on the open shelves, but the online catalogue lists
virtually everything held in store, and any item can be ordered up to use.
The Centre is open to anyone over the age of 16, but all users have to have a reader’s ticket. It is
used by some 1200 visitors each year, both academics and family historians, asking over 3000
enquiries. A good deal of the stock has come from donations, which means that much is unofficial,
personal documents that often give quite a different view of army life from the official accounts. No
service records are held here – they are official documents, so are held by the National Archives. In
any case many WWI records were destroyed in a bombing raid during WWII: those that survive have
been digitised and put on the Ancestry database.
Highlights of the Collection include:
 An almost complete run of the Army List dating back to the eighteenth century
 A large collection of regimental histories
 A home-made biographical file of all Victoria Cross holders
 A large collection of regimental journals (useful for tracing soldiers where official records have
perished)
Other materials include:
 20,000 medals
 100,000 art works
 Maps, photos and prints.
A few examples of each of these had been brought out of storage for us to look through.
Kate then handed over to two fellow curators who gave us a very useful outline of the publishing
history of World War I. Dr Alastair Massie focussed on how views of the War have changed over the
last hundred years, which reminded us that there are many sides to the argument. Dr Robert Fleming
gave us an international viewpoint – soldiers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa
played important roles in the War and their histories, official and unofficial, should also be taken into
account. He had also prepared for us a comprehensive reading list, which will be useful to check for
stock.
Both curators have been working on books that draw from the Museum’s collection. Alastair Massie’s
Wives and Sweethearts traces the history of warfare through love letters, while Robert Fleming’s Be
Ready!: Posters of the First World War looks at how the Great War was portrayed by posters of the
time.
The Museum plans to start major redevelopment work this year, and parts of the Museum, including
the Study Centre, will be closed off, so visit while you can, or wait until the redeveloped museum
reopens. For details of the Study Centre go to http://www.nam.ac.uk/research/templer-
study-centre
Our grateful thanks go to all three curators who gave up so much of their time to research, prepare
and present the tour to our group.