On 13 September 1944 a Dakota aircraft, with an escort of 45 Spitfires, flew across the English Channel towards Paris. The plane carried the new British Ambassador to France, Alfred ‘Duff’ Cooper, with the mission to re-establish a British presence in the newly liberated French capital.
Britain has a proud Olympic tradition. Since the revival of the modern Games in 1896, Britain is one of few nations to have sent competitors to every summer Olympics, and this year London has the distinction of being the first …
No previous Prime Minister ran 10 Downing Street like David Lloyd George. His predecessors had governed conventionally; he launched a revolution as profound as that under Henry VIII. This was partly because he headed a wartime coalition government, which called for an …
Maurice Hankey (1877-1963) deserves to be far better known than he is today as the principal architect of the Cabinet Office in modern British government. It would be wrong to see the current system as identical to that established by …
At the beginning of 2012 Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service, retired. Rather than handing over to a single successor his post was divided into three. The role of Cabinet Secretary was filled by …
In the late 1890s HM Treasury gave the Office (later the Ministry) of Works money for the purchase of art for Government buildings in London. This was the origin of the Government Art Collection (GAC). Today the GAC is responsible for acquiring and …
Margaret Thatcher moved into Number 10 in June 1979 shortly after winning her first general election. She was not greatly impressed by the untidy flat and dullish official rooms, and when she left Downing Street eleven and a half years later, …
“How the power of Prime Ministry grew up into its present form it is difficult to trace precisely.” In 1841 a former Prime Minister, Viscount Melbourne, explained the above to Queen Victoria. Details of the lives of individual Prime Ministers …
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