| Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso KT PC CMG 1890-1970 Born 22 October 1890 son of Clarence Granville Sinclair Educated at Eton and Sandhurst 1910 Entered the Army 1918 Married Marigold Forbes (2 sons, 2 daughters) 1919-1921 Personal Military Secretary to Secretary of State for War. 1921-1922 Private Secretary to Secretary of State for Colonies. 1922 CMG 1922-1945 MP (Lib) Caithness and Sutherland. 1925-1930 Temporary Chairman of Committees, House of Commons. 1927-1930 Member of Empire Marketing Board. 1930-1931 Chief Liberal Whip 1931 PC 1931-1932 Secretary of State for Scotland 1940-1945 Secretary of State for Air. 1935-1945 Leader, Liberal Parliamentary Party 1941 KT 1942-1949 Hon Air Commodore AAF 1938-1945 Lord Rector of Glasgow University 1953-1968 President Eighty Club 1956-1958 President Air League of British Empire 1954-1961 Political Honours Scrutiny Committee 1970 Died 15 June The collection held at Churchill Archives Centre includes correspondence (including general, official, political, constituency and parliamentary correspondence); speeches; Liberal Organisation and Scottish Liberal organisation and Federation material; press cuttings; and Scottish Office, Scottish Board of Health, Secretary of State for Scotland material. For the most part, the collection is made up of constituency, parliamentary and Liberal party correspondence of the 1920s and 1930s. There is virtually no wartime material but Section IV contains correspondence (arranged alphabetically by correspondents' names) and press cuttings from 1945 on into the 1950s. The papers transferred from the Scottish Record Office form a separate and coherent group, consisting of papers of 1923-1937 relating to the Scottish Office, the Scottish Board of Health and Thurso's period as Secretary of State for Scotland. The papers in the first box of Section I are also particularly noteworthy as they include Thurso's correspondence with Winston Churchill from 1915 to 1920. The papers of Archibald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso, came into Churchill Archives Centre through the good of offices of his son, the 2nd Viscount, in several batches between April 1972 and September 1973. The collection had incurred two major misfortunes before its transfer to Cambridge. During the War, the bulk of the Thurso papers that were being stored in Liberal Party headquarters in London were destroyed by an incendiary bomb. After the War, a large portion of the remaining papers were destroyed in a fire that broke out at Thurso East Mains where they were being kept in a room above the laundry. Most of the papers that were rescued from this second blaze were severely damaged both by the flames and by water from the firemen's hoses. Section VI of the collection contains the charred remains of this accident which are too fragile to handle whilst those damaged files which have already been repaired by the Conservationist have been placed in their appropriate places within the collection. In Viscount Thurso's own lifetime, he was asked by the Scottish Record Office (in 1966) if he would deposit there the papers relating to his tenure of the office of Secretary of State and these papers were consequently deposited in Edinburgh early in 1972. At the same time, Viscount Thurso's son began the transfer of the residue of his late father's papers (the 1st Viscount had died in June 1970) to Churchill College. These papers are our Sections I and II. In January 1973 the Scottish Record Office agreed to transfer their Thurso papers, relating to his time as Secretary of State for Scotland, to Churchill College, having first xeroxed them. This collection was catalogued in the National Register of Archives (Scotland) Survey 189 (Additional) and comprises Section V of our Thurso collection. By the spring of 1973, Viscount Thurso's secretary, Miss Cynthia Metcalf, was sorting and listing the papers that were to be deposited here in May and September that year as Sections III and IV. | ![[Home]](/images/logo.gif){kind=logo}
