For my ears, it's always a cause of celebration, scooping up the ephemera of the person who has shaped a cultural life, whether in music, literature, performing arts, politics, or for being old after being young, and having made so much to make it into significance.
So it is with Tony Benn.
Blimey, writing journals from the age of nine? And I bet those early entries aren't like My rabbit died. Mummy put him in the garden. I hope Flopsy is eating lettuce. Forever.
I bet they were all Studied British Parliamentary history this morning. Must find out about this fellow, Erskine May.
But I have questions. What are the notebooks like? Is the paper thin, or lined? Are the note books thick or thin? Big or little? Card covered or cloth? Are Tiny Benn's books spilled over with milk from morning cereal? How did Junior Benn handle his favourite note books? Did Teenage Benn doodle rude pictures in the back pages? And, as he grew up and changed, where did he write, and what of himself did he leave behind - around, between, above the words?
I might be nosy parkering too much in the intimacy of the writing experience, but really, I'm fascinated by the memories each note book contains. The physical experience of handling and maintaining that, over time, allows us to peek a little into a person's habits. Your note book is keeping a record of you, even when you don't know it.
Because where we hold a book, tells, over time. Pages folded or torn perhaps say, we were handled roughly. Or do they tell us, we were handled, constantly, sometimes too quick, such was the frustration of that young writer!
The cover, holding rings of mugs and cups and bowls, then says to me not, I was a note book unloved. But, I was always there, on the desk, to hand, invaluable, always a partner, a reader for a writer's thoughts.
Thomas Babington Macaulay's library at Wallington, Northumberland tells me a thing or two about this accidental memory-making.
He's the Member for Parliament who went off to India. He's known for the 'Minute' - the instruction that education in India was to be through the language of English. That's another story, but what fascinated me was the Macaulay who would scribble notes in books, and then bleed on them. (Possibly not intentionally.)
Such was his enthusiasm for early rising thinking - and possibly being provoked beyond calm disposition - he would scribble notes while shaving in the morning. Victorian shaving is a bit hit and miss when you're in a temper, and consequently Thomas, and his note-making, suffered.
So, among the whoops and celebrations for the archives saved for the nation, can I ask you, dear archivists, to add a line or two, to tell me what the pages say? Not the words, but the use, the holding, handling, treasuring or trashing that goes on, every time we pick up our note book.
