Ernest Murray Pollock, 1st Viscount Hanworth (1861-1935) was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a Barrister in 1885 and a K.C. in 1905. Between 1910 and 1923, when he was appointed Master of the Rolls, he sat in the House of Commons as the Unionist Member for Warwick and Leamington. In 1915 he was made Chairman of the Contraband Committee. From 1917 to 1919 he was Controller of the Foreign Trade Department, and from 1919 to 1922 Solicitor-General. In March 1922 he became Attorney-General but relinquished that office in October of that year after the break-up of the Coalition Government.

Lord Hanworth was a member of a distinguished legal family. He was the son of George Pollock (1821-1915), Queen's Remembrancer, and a grandson of Sir Frederick Pollock (1783-1870) the last Lord Chief Baron of England. In 1929 Lord Hanworth published a biography of Sir Frederick. The correspondence and papers upon which the biography was based are included in this collection.