The collection mainly consists of the private correspondence between John Treleaven and his future wife June Kellett between January 1946 and April 1950, and during the first months of their marriage, up to December 1950. The letters chart the course of a romance in post-war Britain and provide detailed observations of naval life. There are some photographs and newspaper cuttings relating to the couple and the HMS AFFRAY disaster. There are also some notes and transcriptions for a possible book on Treleaven. An abridged collection of almost one thousand of the letters was compiled by June Tower and published by The Grassgarth Press, Kendal, in 2009 (see PBH2662 in the Caird Library catalogue).

Administrative / biographical background
Treleaven was born in 1927, the eldest son of Charles John Treleaven and Winifred Constance Treleaven née Monckton. He was educated at Whitgift School in Croydon, Surrey. Between 1945 and 1948 he trained to be an officer in the engineering branch of the Royal Navy, attending the Royal Naval Engineering College (RNEC) at Manadon and Keyham in Devon. As part of this training, he went to sea on the light cruiser HMS DIDO (1939) and won the Clare D’Oyly memorial prize. Between 1949 and 1950 Treleaven served on the battleship HMS VANGUARD (1944) in the Mediterranean and then the Home Fleet. He married June Kathleen Kellett at Immanuel Church, Streatham, in 1950. Early in the following year he was appointed to HMS Dolphin at Gosport, the home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Treleaven was one of the 75 crew members who died when the submarine HMS AFFRAY (1944) was lost during a training exercise in the English Channel on 16 April 1951. His widow later remarried, becoming June Kathleen Tower in 1954. She was present when a memorial to the men lost aboard the AFFRAY was unveiled on the island of Alderney in 2012.