History of the Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell Collection

Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell met in Egypt during National Service in the Royal Air Force, and soon established a friendship based on their mutual love of cinema. After demobilisation in 1954 they kept up their friendship, later sharing a flat in London. Having seen Peter's 'motley assortment' of cinema books from his school days, and heard the all-too-familiar story of treasured childhood items given away to jumble sales, Bill suggested that they move the books (78 altogether) to London and begin trying to collect the 'missing' items. Throughout the 1960s they browsed around second-hand bookshops and by 1970 had increased the collection to over 500 books. In the 1970s, as Bill began to make his mark as a film-maker, the collection began to diversify - printed ephemera, programmes, sheet music, cigarette cards, postcards - in fact, almost anything with some connection to the cinema. At the time such items were still relatively cheap and easy to find. Membership of the National Film Theatre led Bill and Peter to take more interest in silent films, film history and eventually the optical entertainments which preceded the cinema. From their first pre-cinema artefact (a phenakistoscope) the collection grew and diversified even further, with Bill concentrating more on pre-cinema and Peter on cinema-related items. As Peter says, "we were always bargain-hunters, and it was our rule only to buy modern books if they were half price or under."

Bill's ambition for the collection was that it would one day form a museum which would allow young people to enjoy and benefit from their fascinating optical heritage. In the 1980s several schemes for establishing a museum in London came and went without fruition, while all the time the collection itself continued to accumulate more and more treasures. Some items from the collection appeared in Bill's 1987 film Comrades, contributing to its important sub-text about vision and ways of seeing the world.

Tragically, Bill Douglas died from cancer in 1991, depriving the British film industry of a great unfulfilled talent. In looking for ways to establish a memorial to Bill, Peter talked to a number of institutions about a home for the collection, eventually deciding to donate it to the Exeter University Foundation. As Peter put it at the time, "Exeter undertook to commemorate Bill by name and this was the deciding factor. The Bill Douglas Centre will embody both a museum and a library and promises to become a living and growing memorial." Since the collection arrived at Exeter, Peter has continued to supplement the Centre's holdings with recent books, ephemera and artefacts, while also filling those gaps which remain from earlier periods. Over 2000 items have been added to the initial Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell Collection since the Centre was established, and these numbers are certain to rise, with Peter's generosity towards the Centre and its work. Peter has also supplemented the donation of the collection with the establishment of a trust fund providing three scholarships for PhD students working in cinema studies.

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