Three large boxes of archive material formed by the long time figure skating correspondent Dennis L. Bird, containing paperwork, letters, reports etc.

Three large boxes of archive material formed by the long time figure skating correspondent Dennis L. Bird, containing paperwork, letters, reports etc. between 1936 and 1990, covering British, international and Olympic ice skating tournaments, including his hand written notes and scores from these events For over half a century, Dennis Bird was one of the world's foremost authorities on figure skating, a walking encyclopaedia for the history of the sport. Up to his death, despite the computer era when facts are easily obtained with a few strokes of the keyboard, ''Dicky'' Bird's phone number was a prized research tool. He was still fielding occasional telephone calls from around the world while in hospital from the stroke which finally felled him in 2005. As archivist of the National Ice Skating Association of Great Britain, he produced Our Skating Heritage: a centenary history of the National Skating Association of Great Britain, 1879-1979, an outstanding book commissioned to celebrate the association's 100th anniversary which is unmatched both for its detail and its lack of errors. He was also the skating correspondent of The Times between 1959 and 1978.