The Papers of Arthur Elliott Felkin

The collection includes detailed journals recording his business and personal life, including sexual relationships, while working as a diplomat in Switzerland, China, India, and America; personal and business papers; correspondence with Kingsmen and literary figures including E.M. Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, John Maynard Keynes, Raisley Moorsom, Margaret Jourdain and Ka Cox [Arnold-Forster]; photographs; Rugby School and Cambridge University examination papers; material relating to First World War Prisoner of War camps at Frongoch, Wales, Frith Hill, near Aldershot, and Blandford, Dorset; reports and printed material concerning the League of Nations, especially its Permanent Central Opium Board, later the Drug Supervisory Body of the United Nations. Includes the papers of Valentine van Muyden.

Elliott Felkin was born on 31 December 1892. He was admitted to King's College, Cambridge in 1911. After graduating he worked as an interpreter in prison camps until his employment as personal assistant to Lord Salter, General Secretary of the Reparation Commission in Paris and later head of the economics section of the League of Nations Secretariat. Felkin was appointed Secretary to the Permanent Central Opium Board in the 1930s.

Elliott Felkin married Joyce Chapman in 1920; they had a son and a daughter. The couple were divorced during the Second World War. After his retirement Felkin moved to the Alpes Martines.

These papers are available for consultation at King's College, Cambridge, four days a week most of the year, by appointment only. For further details or to make an appointment please email archivist@kings.cam.ac.uk

Elliott Felkin presented his letters, papers and journals to King's College in 1957 on condition that they would remain closed to scholars for 50 years, or until the death of his surviving children. During this time, the material was held in locked trunks within one of the Library stores. In February 1996, Hugh Felkin agreed to a relaxing of the original restrictions on access to his father's collection.

Items catalogued as AEF/4/21-4 were placed in a separate locked trunk, and appear to have been placed in the custody of Raisley Moorsom for an indefinite period during the 1950s. They may have been returned to Elliott Felkin for deposit along with the remainder of his papers, or presented separately to King's at a later date.

A full catalogue is available on the University's Janus website, and in hard copy in the Archive Centre.

Permission to quote in print from the published or unpublished writings of Elliott Felkin, or to reproduce any photographs taken by him, should be obtained from Mr Hugh Felkin. Further information can be obtained from the Archive Centre.

All journal volumes and file boxes containing loose papers were secured with combination locks. These have been removed. For conservation purposes, the file boxes have been replaced by archival envelopes.

For biographical details, see 'Annual Report of the Council, King's College, Cambridge'. Nov. 1968, pp. 34-5. A copy is available in the Archive Centre.