Ray Andrews attended Newport (Essex) Grammar School for boys in the 1950s. The exercise books cover part of his O level course in the fourth and fifth years. The first page of Book 1 is headed 'A history of the English-speaking peoples', which introduces a series of 'chapters' of notes covering British colonial settlement of the Americas and American Revolution, followed in Book 2 by the second British Empire with the voyages of Captain Cook, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, the slave trade and the Boer War. Book 3 covers European history from the eighteenth century. Ray's essays and notes have been marked and there are short tests.