An early task of any new Prime Minister is to familiarise themselves with the UK's intelligence agencies – the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Security Service (MI5). Yet, for all the interest they may have …| History of government
In March 1962 a secret report landed on the desks of senior officials in the Foreign Office. Written by Foreign Office Historian Rohan Butler it was a forensic and critical account of the loss in 1951 of Britain’s single biggest …| History of government
We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it. “This thing” as British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin put it, was the Atomic Bomb. Bevin was quoted …| History of government
The most that we can say is that we have made the best of a bad bargain, not that we have got a fair deal (Prime Minister Edward Heath, 1 September 1971) Fifty years ago, Ambassadors representing the 4 Occupying …| history.blog.gov.uk
The principles set out in the Atlantic Charter eighty years ago remain key to the global vision shared by the UK and US. But its terms also contained the roots of international tensions that persist today: for example in relation …| history.blog.gov.uk