The Association
Research
One of the primary aims of the Association is to collect and provide good cataloguing and archiving of the many various types of materials that constitute the historical evidence of the remarkable story of the Basque Children who came to this country.
Through personal contacts we are all actively engaged in collecting archive materials. We have recently agreed that in due course we will deposit most of our material with the Special Collection Division of the Hartley Library at the University of Southampton.
The Special Collection has a strong interest in refugee groups who arrived in this country through the docks of Southampton, and it seems fitting that this town that provided care and shelter at the beginning should do so again at the end of the story.
The Special Collection Division has a very proactive approach to promoting its materials for research, and this was another of the attractions, as we are always eager to encourage and support research in this field.
Dissemination of Information
The Secretary is continually receiving e-mails and letters from teachers, students, authors, media programme producers, niños, their children and relatives, requesting information about the colonies, help for research etc. To assist in this matter the Association has produced a bibliography on literature concerning the niños as a starting point for researchers. These books, most of which are in English, are listed in the bibliography.
Other ways in which the Association has supported research
It has provided archival information to students doing Masters or undergraduate theses. (To date, it has received copies of 4 Masters and 3 undergraduate theses.)
It has also provided information for a BBC radio documentary produced by Simon Evans, and material for the BBC film 'The Guernica Children'
It has provided background information for an established novelist whose latest book is set in Spain during the Civil War.
Articles have been refereed for learned journals.
Collection of Archival Material
The Association has received many photographs, posters, programmes and other printed matter, and is always interested in new material.
It has discovered a collection of photographs of the niños which had been lying dormant in the Oxford Public Library (in the Cyril Arapoff collection), and a collection of 30 pencil drawings of the niños from the Langham (Colchester) colony made by Richard Murry, the brother of the writer John Middleton Murry.
Local libraries have been visited and newspapers of the time trawled through to find new information about the niños' stay, which they have passed on.
The Association has received 3 videos of film footage from the colonies at Hull, Cambridge and an unidentified one. A video was recently made at the unveiling of a blue plaque in Sutton-on-Hull.
Support for Research
Susana Sabin-Fernández, a post-graduate student in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Southampton, carried out Ph.D. research on the niños vascos. Her thesis is titled: "The Basque refugee children of the Spanish Civil War in the UK: memory and memorialisation". More information and thesis download.
Historian Diana Gulland researched Tythrop House, prior to publication. This is where Poppy Vulliamy's "boys" went, after going to Diss and Great Rollesby, before going to Farringdon and then to Shipton-under-Wichwood. Her email address is mailto:dianagulland012@btinternet.com.