Sir Malcolm Arnold's papers saved for the National Archive

We were so pleased to hear that the campaign backed by the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber to save a vital archive of the papers of the late composer Sir Malcolm Arnold has been a success.
There were fears that the documents held by the Ministry of Justice and relating to a period of seven years in the 1970s and 80s when Sir Malcolm was in Court of Protection care suffering from alcoholism and mental health issues would be lost to the nation.
The Ministry had indicated that it had exhausted all possible options for preserving the archive. But after a campaign by Sir Malcolm’s daughter Katherine and a petition signed by many prominent people from the world of music and the arts including sometime Clive Conway Productions contributor Lloyd Webber, it has been confirmed that they will not be destroyed.
They will instead be housed by the National Archive but because they contain personal information concerning third parties relevant to Sir Malcolm’s case they will be held under data protection law restrictions and will not be open to the public.
However it has been stressed that this privacy clause is not indefinite and will be reviewed at a suitable point in the future.
This will eventually open the documents up to researchers and biographers of the composer who died in 2006 aged 84 and was  best known for his many film scores including Bridge on the River Kwai for which he won an Oscar.