Call Number:

C0881

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

24 boxes

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Nancy Crawshaw Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1930s-1996 (inclusive)

Creator:

Crawshaw, Nancy.

Form:

Correspondence. and Photographs.

Abstract:

The Nancy Crawshaw Papers contains the correspondence, photographs, and writings of Nancy Crawshaw, as well as copies of her published work. Her writings include work on her book The Cyprus Revolt (1978), lectures, broadcasts and articles from her career as a journalist, and her notes and other writings.

Nancy Crawshaw was born Cecilia Anna Mary Jenkins in 1914 in Vevey, Switzerland, to British parents. She trained as a photographer at the Reimann School of Photography and Commercial Art at their Vienna and London locations. (The rise of Nazism and World War II made the switch between these two necessary.)

After temporarily working as a wartime civil servant, she began a career in journalism, starting out initially as a photo-journalist in 1946. Continuing in this specialty during the next three years, she worked in the Balkans and the Middle East. She accompanied the United Nations investigation team in Communist-held Northern Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria as an independent photo-journalist, and was commissioned by G.B. Instructional Films Ltd. to make six film strips on "The Geography of the Desert," traveling to Iraq, Kurdistan, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

In the next phase of her career she focused chiefly on print journalism, although she continued to take photographs which occasionally accompanied her articles. She became an accredited special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Greece (1949-1959) and Cyprus (1955-1959). From this point on, she regularly took extended trips to both Greece and Cyprus and was seen as a British expert on the international political issues regarding Cyprus. She wrote numerous articles for foreign policy periodicals, gave lectures and papers at academic conferences, and contributed sections to books on Cyprus and the Encyclopedia Americana. This standing as an expert was greatly bolstered in 1978 with the publication of her book The Cyprus Revolt, which focused on the period between World War II and the international agreement that created the independent Republic of Cyprus, and the struggle of the Greek-Cypriot population for union with Greece.

She served as one of two British consultants to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in connection with a major research project that resulted in the book Le Conflit de Chypre by Professor Francois Crouzet (2 vols., Bruylant, Brussels, 1973). During the 1950s, she was twice employed by the British Foreign Office, once in 1953 to research the Arab States and their oil industries, and once in 1958 to aid their publicity efforts by giving lectures in connection with the Cyprus Crisis and the Cyprus debate in the UN. In addition, she served as a specialist adviser on the Cyprus Problem to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee from 1980 to1983.

She married J.T. Crawshaw (a Lloyd's underwriter) in 1939, and was a member of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and a licentiate of the British Institute of Professional Photographers.

The collection consists of the correspondence, photographs, and writings of Nancy Crawshaw, as well as copies of her published work. Her correspondence is both personal and professional, including also tributes, commissions, and letters of recommendation. Her photographs are presented in albums with explanatory notes, as negatives with thumbnails, and as mounted and unmounted prints. They include photographs of Greece, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, and the Middle East. The photographs on Greece focus on different topics including classical antiquities, agriculture, the Greek Civil War, shipbuilding, fishing, and architecture. There are also photographs from her accompaniment of UN expeditions in the Balkans. Her photographs on the Middle East include photographs of Turkey and photographs taken on assignment for G.B. Instructional Films on Syria and Lebanon and for the British Foreign Office on Iraq's oil industry. Crawshaw's writings include work on her book The Cyprus Revolt (1978), work for Professor Francois Crouzet's book Le Conflit de Chypre (for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), her notes on Rauf Denktash's The Cyprus Triangle, lectures, broadcasts, and articles from her journalistic career, and her notes, journalistic and otherwise. The Cyprus Revolt focuses on the efforts of the Greek-Cypriot population to unite with Greece from 1955 to 1959. Denktash has been the main leader of the Turkish-Cypriot community since the 1950s and the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since it declared its independence. The copies of Crawshaw's published work include two scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, pamphlets and magazines containing her articles and photographs, and loose cuttings and tearsheets of her articles and photographs. Princeton's Rare Books Division also has her collection of ephemera related to Greece and Cyprus.