Odds and quads

The Anderson Archive at the University of Stirling is devoted to the maverick British film and theatre director Lindsay Anderson (1923-94).

January 20, 2011




He is probably most famous for the films This Sporting Life (1963), If... (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973), although he was also responsible for many stage productions and documentaries. The last include an ill-fated project to capture the historic occasion in 1985 when George Michael's group Wham! became the first Western band to tour China.

The collection consists of: 150 archive boxes; more than 2,000 books and 700 videotapes; a plastic replica of an Oscar given to Anderson by a friend; and the leather jacket that was so much a part of his carefully cultivated public image.

Along with working papers, there are extensive memorabilia from Anderson's colonial childhood in India and his school days at Cheltenham College, which he satirised so savagely in If...

The director also kept a diary for more than five decades, which offers a vivid picture of his war years with the Intelligence Corps intercepting Japanese communications, the party scene in London's "Swinging Sixties" and the sheer excesses of the Hollywood machine.

Send suggestions for this series on the treasures, oddities and curiosities owned by universities across the world to: matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com.

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