Notebook of Berta Ruck, August-December 1938, containing a journal of a stay in Italy, mostly around Lake Garda and Venice, August-September 1938 (ff. 1-34), notes for fiction, and comments on the Sudeten crisis in Europe. Photographs, press cuttings, theatre programmes and twenty-six personal and family letters and cards, 1936, 1938, have been pasted in.
The correspondents include Oliver Onions, July-September 1938 (ff. 9 verso, 13 verso, 14 verso, 17 verso, 20 verso, 21 verso, 47 verso), Philip Connard, [1938] (f. 27 verso), and Marda Vanne, 4 August 1938 (f. 48); a letter on behalf of Queen Mary, 3 February 1936, acknowledges Ruck's letter of condolence on the death of George V (f. 3 verso). A programme and cuttings, October 1938, relating to the first production of the Emlyn Williams play The Corn is Green are ff. 34 verso, 36, 43-44. Among the photographs are two of Ruck in Venice and Cologne (ff. 45 verso, 49). The journal entries include an overheard conversation between a German and an Austrian concerning 'the Juden question' (f. 18) and a description of the former residence of Gabriele D'Annunzio at Gardone (ff. 29 verso-30)