The collection comprises diaries, notebooks, correspondence, photographs, slides, negatives, and articles relating to Sykes’ 1952 and 1954 expeditions to Nepal, organised by the British Museum and the Royal Horticultural Society. Also includes slides, correspondence, articles, maps, and other material from the 1980s to 2018.
Note on slides and photographs: slides are labelled on the mount (except for metal mounts) with details of date, locale, a descriptive caption, and, sometimes, elevation. Sykes’s handwritten notes (in pocket preceding each group of slides) supply more details. Photographs are labelled on the verso with details of date, locale, a descriptive caption, and, sometimes, elevation.
Aside from the expected botanical images and mountain views and scenery, the subjects of Sykes’s slides and photographs are wide-ranging, including villages and villagers, village houses, street scenes, bazaars, markets, festivals, porters, camp sites, camp activities, nomadic people, Hindu and Buddhist temples, shrines, monks, nuns, and monasteries, Buddhist statues, plant processing, seed drying, animals, cultivation and crops, activities such as wool processing, making ropes and mats, spinning and weaving, and brick making.
Sykes, William Russell1 folder containing a Creative Nature booklet outlining activities compiled for the Year of Natural Scotland 2013 which included the event 'Walking with Poets' held at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and its three regional gardens of Benmore, Logan and Dawyck; and Cove Park, June - September 2013. " This year poets Sue Butler, Mandy Haggith, Jena Atkin and Gerry Loose have taken up poetry residences at the four gardens of the RBGE as well as at Cove Park. Walking with Poets provides a chance for these poets to immerse themselves in the magnificent environments and share their awareness, their practice, and their vision of nature with communities around Scotland and the world. The residencies will take place throughout the year and there will be a special closing event held at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on St Andrew's Day 2013. Each of the poets will be blogging about their residency at: walkingwithpoets.wordpress.org ." This was a partnership between the Scottish Poetry Library, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Cove Park.
Inserted into the booklet are four postcards, one for each poet, signed and featuring a quote.
•Box containing filed notes and lists
•Box containing photographs from China and Tibet (1911)
•Box of correspondence and lists (1919-1925)
•Box of correspondence (1926-1930)
•Box of correspondence, list and expedition information (1930-1956)
•Box of ‘Fungi References’, reports, descriptions and field notes
•Folder containing his thesis ‘Fungal Succession Found on Bird Pellets and its comparison with the Dung Sequence’ (Jun – Oct 1959)
•Four folders of papers
•Two boxes of material for a biography of James Bolton (1735-1799) and his collecting sites and lecture notes on the same. (Slides are kept in the slide collection)
•Letter to Watson from Henry Trimen (16 Jan 1876)
•Letter to Watson from Henry Roscoe (1 May 1872)
•Copy of a letter to the Linnaean Society from Watson (23 Dec 1863)