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This collection, the second accession of Montagu papers received at Trinity, comprises papers of Edwin Montagu himself, with various related additions. It includes correspondence between Montagu and his wife Venetia, both before and after their marriage; telegraphic correspondence between Montagu, as Secretary of State for India, and the Viceroys Lord Chelmsford and Lord Reading; parts of Montagu’s second Indian Diary; letters from Montagu to his mother and father, Lord and Lady Swaythling; and a few letters to Montagu from various correspondents, including H. H. Asquith, Winston Churchill, and members of the Stanley family. The items added after Montagu’s death include press-cuttings of obituaries, and correspondence about the sorting of the papers in the 1950s.

The collection consists mainly of letters and papers received by Montagu in the course of his political career, along with typescript copies of his replies. There are substantial series of correspondence with Curzon, Churchill, Asquith, Lloyd George, Chelmsford, Hardinge, Indian notables and India Office officials. The papers principally reflect Montagu's great interest in India, but there is also material on wartime reconstruction, Ireland, Egypt, and Turkey, as well as interesting personal accounts of the fall of the Asquith government in December 1916 and the Paris Peace Conference.

There are also more than five hundred original letters from Montagu to his mother, Lady Swaythling, from 1885 to 1918.