British buy violinist Menuhin's papers

LONDON, March 3 (UPI) -- The personal archive of American-born violinist Sir Yehudi Menuhin, who became a British citizen in 1965, has been bought by Britain's Royal Academy of Music.

"I am particularly pleased that Sir Yehudi's archive will now be made available to the public and not dispersed worldwide," Curtis Price, principle professor at the academy told the BBC.

Price said the archive, bought from the Menuhin family for $2.3 million, includes letters from Albert Einstein, Sir Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok, and Benjamin Britten, signed photographs of Jean Sibelius, Arturo Toscanini, and Charlie Chaplin, and several original scores by Felix Mendelssohn. Most of the items, with the exception of Menuhin's correspondence with the royal family, will be on display at the academy's York Gate Collections gallery in central London.

Menuhin, who started his career as a child prodigy in San Francisco, established a school for musically gifted children in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey, in 1963 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth two years later.