This collection of letters, diaries, photographs, certificates, and family history papers were in the possession of Margaret Rayner and/or her husband, Oswald Rayner
Biographies:
Oswald Theodore Rayner (1888-1961) was born in Smethwick and educated at King Edward VI School in Birmingham and Oriel College, Oxford. He qualified as a barrister in 1914 and joined the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps.
During his military career he worked as a British agent in Russia, where he is believed to have been involved in the murder plot against Rasputin. After demobilisation in 1920, he worked briefly in Intelligence in Constantinople and at the Russian Department of the Foreign Office in London until 1926. For the rest of the interwar years, Oswald worked most of the time for the British-American Tobacco (B.A.T.) Co. Ltd. based in London, though his business took him to France, Spain and elsewhere in Europe and North Africa.
In 1938 he he moved to Spain to take up a position as Assistant Agent under his old chief in Moscow. When World War II broke out, he worked as a Censorship Liaison Officer with the Canadian government at Ottawa, returning to London, then to Oxford in 1943 as part of the British Army's Intelligence Corps. From 1946 to 1948, he worked as Head of the British Government Purchasing Mission in Spain and Portugal, with its HQ in Madrid.
Oswald married Tatiana Alexeiewna Glubokovskaya Marek in Moscow in 1923. Their son, John Felix Hamilton, was born in 1924 (died 1964), and daughter Patricia in 1927 (died 1934). They divorced in 1940. He met Margaret Huntingford in London in 1945.
Margaret Constance Rayner nee Huntingford (1908-2002), known as Peggy, was born in Calcutta, India, and educated at St Winifred's Girls' School in Eastbourne. She worked as a private secretary near or in London) including at the Bank of England from 1928 to about 1947. She married Oswald Rayner at Westminster Register Office on 23/Dec/1947. After five years together in London, from 1953 to 1957 they lived in Abingdon, then moved to West Way in Botley, Oxford, in 1958.
Between 1947 and 1963 Peggy was one of the St Martin Singers in London. She was chair of the Samaritans in Oxford until 1978 and was heavily involved with St. Michael's church in Cumnor and in support of Christian charities.
After Oswald's death in 1961, Peggy offered lodging to students in Oxford and remained friends with many of them (especially Boudewyn van Oort, a Dutch Canadian, and his wife Marjorie). From 1969 to 1997 she lived in Vicarage Lane in Oxford, then moved to St John's Home, All Saints Convent in St Mary's Road, Oxford, where she died aged 94. She had two elder sisters, Agnes Mary (Molly) and Marjorie (Bumpy), to whom she appears to have been close.
The records in this collection were deposited by All Saints Convent, Oxford, in August 2002 as accession 5032.
Catalogued by Timothy Xu & Mark Priddey, September 2012