...Using a German code which he knew had been broken by the British, he transmitted the message ‘The British are now running France’. Unsurprisingly, the French intercepted it. In spring...
![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...
...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...
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...
...the Messenger service would last until the 20th century. Today The Corps of Queen's Messengers still exists today, as not everything can be sent by electronic or registered mail. In...
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...
...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...
...then I'll begin. Could a government document ever have been a potential contender for the ‘Jackanory’1 treatment? Let me explain. Today, 3 January, as part of the transition to a...
...the real head of the executive, an active political force concerned with the day-to-day issues of government to a monarch with a veto – the right to dismiss the Prime...