David Cannadine, the well-known historian of the British Empire, attended King Edward VI Five Ways School in Birmingham. His school note books from the mid-1960s are devoted to topics from the history of the British Empire, such as the first British Empire in the Americas and the early settlement of Australia and New Zealand and their later development. Other topics include the political history of different regions of Africa, especially South Africa, and of India in the eighteenth century. The notes include coloured and cyclostyled maps.