British Crime Writing Archives

The British Crime Writing Archives is a nationally-significant collection of records relating to crime writing in the UK. It holds the Records of the Crime Writers' Association and the Records of the Detection Club, as well as several author archives collected by the two organisations.

The Crime Writers' Association and the Detection Club are the UK’s two most prominent societies for the promotion and promulgation of crime writing.

The Crime Writers' Assocation is a professional organisation founded in 1953 by John Creasey; they award the prestigious Dagger Prizes and support their author members. 

The Detection Club is a small but renowned social club founded in 1930 by Anthony Berkeley and a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, and many more. The first president was G. K. Chesterton, and his seven successors have included Christie and Sayers.

The President of the Detection Club, also a former Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, is the crime writer Martin Edwards. In his capacity as Honorary Archivist for the two organisations, Martin worked with Gladstone’s Library to make their archives available to the public in the Library’s residential setting. The CWA deposits began in 2015; in 2016 the papers of the Detection Club were also deposited.

Since 2017, the CWA and the Detection Club have run the annual Alibis in the Archives event at Gladstone’s Library.