[Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford.] Autograph Signature ('Margot Oxford') to Copy of Typed Letter to the Editor of The Times, regarding the plans of the University of London with regard to the preservation of Torrington Square, Bloomsbury.

See her entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, long 8vo. In good condition, lightly aged. Headed ‘TORRINGTON SQUARE. / To the EDITOR of The TIMES’. Whether the letter was published or not, and if so whether it appeared in its entirety, is unclear. Clearly a carbon, but with her characteristic signature at end in black ink ‘Margot Oxford’. The forty-seven-line text has four autograph emendations. Begins: ‘Sir, / It has been officially announced that the building of the School of Oriental Studies (London Institution) in Finsbury Circus is to be sold and that in due course the School “will be accommodated in its own new building on the Bloomsbury site”; and further that the Court of the University of London has presented a new site to Birkbeck College.’ In the light of this, and as a Bloosmburyite (the Asquiths had lived at 44 Bedford Square since the early 1920s), she continues: ‘May we see in these announcements, the gleam of a hope that the University proposes to preserve the garden of Torrington Square and to surround it with a group of beautiful buildings, generously spaced, and allowing glimpses of those wonderful trees?’She quotes a ‘Resolution adopted by the Senate of the University in March 1928’, suggesting that ‘a group of beautiful buildings’ would give ‘greater scope to the genius of the Architect, Mr. Charles Holden, than a single patternised building’. In then emphasizing ‘the strenght of public opinion in favour of the preservation of London squares, she quotes a statement by Lord Rothermere ‘in handing over the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park in Southwark’. The final paragraph outlines how ‘[t]he garden of Torrington Square could be made a thing of beauty, rivalling the garden of New Square in Lincoln’s Inn’, and could be used for purposes including ‘garden parties, open air concerts and plays’. Construction delays and the war meant that what became SOAS did not move to its Bloomsbury site until 1941.