Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SWIA 2AH
From The Minister of State
27 April 1988
Dear Murray
Thank you for your letter of 18 April about your invitation to contribute to the Oxford Colonial Archives Project.
We have given general, if passive, support to the project and if you wish to consent to an interview we would have no objection in principle. I am sure you were right to say you must agree in advance the questions that should be put to you: you will appreciate better than anyone that material on Hong Kong is getting more rather than less sensitive as time passes. The conditions we should like you to obtain from the project are that release should not be considered earlier than 30 years from the time of the last event covered in the tape and that, depending upon the topics discussed, the FCO should have the right to ask that the material be withheld even beyond that period.
I know that the project is interested also in acquiring caches of private papers dealing with colonial matters. As you know, so far as we are concerned, any papers produced by former officials in the course of their career remain official and belong to us!
Should any questions of detail crop up, Miss Barnes, the Head of Library and Records Department (01-211 3215), would be glad to help you.
Jauniever finai
The Lord MacLehose of Beoch KT
Beoch
* Maybole
Ayrshire
KA 19 8EN
THE LORD GLENARTHUR
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