The Oxford Development Records Project (1977-) is the lineal descendant of the Oxford Colonial Records Project (1963-1972), whose work on collections of private papers acquired from those who had worked in the Colonial Service has been well described by Patricia M. Pugh in Journal of the Society of Archivists, 6, 1978, 76-86 and by J.J. Tawney (‘Personal thoughts on a rescue operation’) in African Affairs, 67, 1968, 345-50.

Neither of these accounts, in the event, paid adequate attention to the Oral History dimensions of the OCRP whereby, with the help of an honorary Research Officer, tape-recorded interviews were concluded between 1967 and 1972 with nearly eighty members of the Colonial Service or Colonial Office (along with a few from the private sector), ranging from the Governor-General with thirty years’ service to his credit to the unconfirmed Cadet who resigned after three.