...series we all take for granted. Ordnance Survey, however, has a surprising history because, as Britain’s national mapping authority, today’s suppliers of business intelligence were originally charged with gathering military...
The National Health Service (NHS) is seventy years old today. Founded on 5 July 1948 by Clement Attlee’s Labour government, the NHS is now the most celebrated welfare institution in...
![Extract of the draft note from 2 January 1917 on 10 Downing Street headed paper which reads 'To: The Private Secretary, the Prime Minister has decided, with a view to keeping himself in close touch with the several departments, to establish a ['Secretariat' is crossed out and replaced by 'Department'] in connection with Office of the First Lord of the Treasury. The following gentlemen have been appointed to act as secretaries to the ['First Lord of the Treasury' is crossed out and replaced by 'new Department']](https://history.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/edited-e1483652073427.jpg)
...A hundred years ago today, on 5 January 1917, in the midst of the Great War, an important note was circulated around Whitehall departments. J. T. Davis, private secretary to...
...of international tensions that persist today: for example in relation to Britain’s imperial legacy, Russian suspicions of Western intentions and transatlantic differences over trade. President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on...
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...
...and policy was channelled. Yet many individuals today do not realise what the Privy Council is and the central role it has in fact played in our nation’s history. This...
...of the room, about which there has been both speculation and mystery. There have been different theories about the source of the codebook used to decipher diplomatic traffic. Even today,...
This year marks the 800th anniversary of the granting of Magna Carta by King John. Today, the Great Charter is viewed as the foundation of many of our rights and...
...powerful impact upon those who work within it today. Harold Wilson, who was Prime Minister for almost eight years over two separate terms, pondered the significance of the building’s history...
100 years ago today saw the first German airship raids on Britain when two Zeppelins attacked the coastal towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, Norfolk. In this post, Professor...