...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...
...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...
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...
...MR 1/499 European War The alliance against Napoleon Bonaparte and France was not a united front. Austria and Russia fought to safeguard their territory; Britain fought to protect her Naval...
...of State Byrnes: ‘It is quite clear that the United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan.’3 Why were they dropped on...
...explain Lewis' appointment as sub Librarian in the Foreign Office in 1801, aged just 13. By 1810 he had been promoted to Librarian and Keeper of the Papers. In 1822...
...of the United States and Britain. Their aim, he believed, was to meet the Red Army as far West as possible, occupying territory in the agreed post-war Soviet zone. British...
...fuel and shelter. The new ‘world organisation’, the United Nations, was planned but not up and running. Peacemaking machinery, including the new Council of Foreign Ministers, soon exposed dangerous cracks...