[Sir Thomas Armstrong, Principal of the Royal College of Music.] Typed Letter Signed, praising Professor of Cello Ambrose Gauntlett, whilst renewing his contract for the last time.

See Armstrong’s entry in the Oxford DNB. For Gauntlett, who was Professor of Cello at the RAM from 1947 to 1965, see the excellent article on the ‘Semibrevity’ blog: ‘Ambrose Gauntlett, forgotten gamba player and continuo cellist’, beginning: ‘Although Ambrose Gauntlett (1889-1978) spent most of his career as a full-time orchestral principal, he was the most sought-after continuo cellist and gamba player in the UK for many years. In his obituary, published in The Times, Sir Anthony Lewis mentions “his beautiful playing of the important 18th-century viola da gamba obbligato roles”.’ Commenting on the article, the musicologist Professor Hans van Dijk describes Gauntlett as ‘A very great gambaplayer indeed!’ 1p, foolscap 8vo. Signed ‘T. Armstrong’. Letterhead with RAM coat of arms in red. Creased and with closed tears at head and foot neatly repaired with archival tape. Begins: ‘Dear Ambrose, / I am writing to request you to continue your work in the Royal Academy of Music during the Academic Year, 1964/5, up to the end of the Summer Term in 1965. / I very much regret that the present occasion is the last on which I shall be able to renew this invitation, but I am afraid that you have now reached the age at which a further extension is no longer possible. I know how devoted your services to the Royal Academy of Music have been since you first entered it in 1910, and you will be very much missed by all your pupils and colleagues and by myself personally. When an opportunity occurs, I shall hope to express our thanks personally.’ He ends in the hope that there will be ‘opportunities for you to assist us in various directions even when you have ceased to be a regular member of the professorial staff’.