Harry Cobb - Clerk of the Records 1981-1991

Henry Cobb CBE (1926-2016), also known as Harry, was a staff member of the House of Lords Record Office spanning five decades. He joined the Office as an Assistant Archivist in 1953 and took over from Maurice Bond as Clerk of the Records in 1981 where he remained till his retirement ten years later.

Born and raised in Merseyside it was while studying history at the London School of Economics that he decided upon a career in Archives. Cobb's supervisory role was integral to the 1960s reconstruction of the Victoria Tower repository and he also produced over two dozen articles on the history of Parliament and its records.

An active member of the Society of Archivists he sat as Chairman from 1982-84 and later as President from 1992-96. These services to the profession saw him awarded a CBE in 1991. He remained a regular visitor to the Parliamentary Archives for many years until shortly before his death in 2016.