...1949: signature of the North Atlantic Treaty Today, NATO is 70, its membership at 29. In recent years NATO’s remit and solidarity has been adapted, confirmed, extended and questioned, but...
...but prime ministerial responses to the Great War are, in fact, crucial to how we remember today in some quite unexpected ways. 'Great War generation' For each of the 23...
...to divert precious naval resources to the Far East. The British government knew that the Chinese were ‘fighting the battle of Western Nations in the Far East’ but felt they...
...I believe Korea is the place. Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, en route to Colombo Conference in January 1950[i] Seventy years ago today, the North Korean People’s Army of the Democratic...
...project codenamed TUBE ALLOYS. From 1943 he worked in the US on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb, and from 1947 at the British nuclear establishment at Harwell. Fuchs...
...the NATO alliance and by the end of 1965 France had pulled out of SEATO (South East Asian Treaty Organisation) and refused to participate in future NATO military manoeuvres. He...
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...
...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...
![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-1024x753.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...
...best way to address gaps in the previous system and provide free healthcare to all. Activists and doctors had promoted these ideas in various guises since at least the Edwardian...